262 SUNSHINE AND SPORT 



further down the line, at Salisbury, the day before. 

 Ours was the first boat-train to run over the perman- 

 ent way of the South-Western line since the disaster, 

 and one or two of the ladies could hardly be induced 

 to step on board it. Once again, then, as is my 

 wont, I disembarked in the midst of bad news. It 

 was the earthquake at San Francisco three months 

 ago ; it was the Salisbury railway wreck to-day. 



Here, then, ended my twelve weeks of roaming, 

 ended pleasantly enough with this interesting and 

 well-ordered cruise with the Tagus. " Travel," says 

 an old writer — a namesake and collateral descendant 

 of whom, a well-known resident of Trinidad, I was 

 much interested to meet on this homeward voyage 

 — " should not be merely a certayne gadding about, 

 a vaine beholding of sundry places." 



I have, as it happens, wandered but a little way 

 from the beaten track. Yet I hope that the in- 

 dulgent reader may of his grace acquit me of having 

 made no more than a hackneyed pilgrimage of the 

 kind ordered by the admirable Baedeker, facilitated 

 by the resourceful Cook, and celebrated along all 

 its commonplace route by coloured salvos of pic- 

 torial postcards to more restful friends at home. 



These pages have touched on many interests, 

 some of them, perhaps, on no interest at all to any 

 but myself. Yet perhaps the reader may lay the 

 book down in the indulgent spirit of the elder Pliny, 

 who remarked that no book was so bad but that some 

 part of it was of use. Books were less numerous 

 in his day, else he might have reconsidered so rash 

 a pronouncement. 



