6 L{fe and Li-ttrrx of Frnnrin Gallon 



tliought, as most will hold too, that the ideal traveller was a inaii like 

 hiinst'lf: 



"If you liiivp lit-Altli, a great craving for a<lvt»iitun>, at k'Ast .i iiHxli'mU- fortunt*, and c«n st't 

 your heart on a di-fiiiiu* object, which oV\ travellers <lo not think iinpracticHlile, then — travel hy 

 all means. If, in addition, you have scientific t^iste and knowledge, 1 Wlievu that no career, in 

 time of |)eace, can offer to you more advantages tlutii that of a traveller." (4th Edn. p. 1.) 



Such then is the Art of Travel planned as Gallon hintseli' states during 

 his South African exploration of 1850-51. It deserves a new edition, 

 brought up in sulistance and illustration to date — if the all-round knowledge, 

 such Jis Galton had, still luis its re})re.sentJitive'. 



We cannot, however, leave the subject of travel without referring to two 

 or three other enterprises in which Galton had a hand. Notable among 

 these is the Vacation Tourists and Xotes of Travel, of which he was the 

 originator and editor. It was to be an annual volume and issues appeared 

 for 1860, 1861 and 1862-63. The work Galton tells us just paid its way, 

 and the idea certainly was, and might still be, a good one. The 1860 volume 

 contained papers by W. G. Clark, Leslie Stephen, John Tyndall and othei^s, 

 besides one oy Galton himself. Much of the matter can be retid with 

 pleasure and profit to-day. How wonderfully wise in the light of recent 

 experience seems W. G. Clark's talk with the Frenchman in Genoa over the 

 latter's view that "there will be no secure and lasting peace for Euroj)e until 

 its political .system is l)ased upon the principle of nationalities." How this 

 search for a definition of a 'nationality' migiit have warned President 

 Wilson of the difficulties and the danger of the creed he was to propound 60 

 veai-s Isiter at Versailles! The accounts of early Al})ine ascents, the Allelein 

 Horn by Leslie Stephen, the Eggischhorn by Tyndall and the attempt on 

 the Matterhorn by Hawkins are all still worthy of peru.sal. Galton con- 

 tributed to the first volume a pa])er on Spain and the total eclipse of June 

 1860. He went out with a party in charge of the Astronomer-lloyal in 

 H.M.S. Himalaya and saw the eclipse from La Guardia. This was his 

 first visit to Spain and he saw a good deal of the country, staying in the 

 Pyrenees after the eclipse, and "here that remarkable madness of mountain 

 climbing, to which every healthy man is liable at some period of his life, and 

 which I had always believed myself to have gone through once for all in a 

 mitigated form, began to attack me with extreme severity'.' But while he 

 gives us little account of his mountaineering, he takes up very seriously the 

 (juestion of sleeping or crimping out at great altitudes, and gives a very full 

 description of suitable rations for a six-days' outing, and above all of the 

 knapsack sheepskin sleeping l)ag8* of the trench 'douaniei-s' or the frontier 



' A great niafw of material for a new edition was collected for and sent to Oalton by the 

 late Mr Howard Collins. It will l)e foun<l in the Galton Jjvboratory Archives. 



• Ualtoii himself in his list of published papers, Apjx-ndix to Meiiwrif.ii, p. 324, says the 

 Yaeatirm TourinU container! (t4xi memoirs by himself. I have fnilixl to find more than one. 



' i'araliou TouritU, 1860, p. 446. Galton l»ecame frcjin this date even to the end of his days 

 a frequent visitor to the Pyrenees. 



* With his usual desire to test practical efficiency, Galton carried one of these bags 1000 feet 

 above Luchon and spent the night in it during a terrific thunderstorm ! While familiar to 



