"CIRCUMPEDALISTS"

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 72, 21 September 1940, Page 19

"CIRCUMPEDALISTS"

CYCLING ROUND THE .WORLD

A FEAT OF FORTY YEARS AGO

(By "Quivis.")

The. other, day, in sorting out old books to make room for new, I came

across John .Poster . Eraser's "Round the World on a Wheel," and decided to read it again—after many years—before settling its fate. As a result I iam keeping it among the "live" books, not to be relegated to lumber rooms or other limbos of dead literature beyond resurrection.* If it had been any of the same author's later works, such as "The Real Siberia," "America At Work," Canada As It Is," "Pictures From the Balkans," '^Australia: The Making of a Nation," and so forth—the nanies are legion—l think I should have let it go. Popular as these books were at the time, for Fraser gave the public something then new in topical literature, they were so superficial, they cou^d not last.' I happened to meet the author when he visited New Zealand about thirty years or so ago in preparation, for his "Australia: The Making of a Nation"—in which, I believe, he had a chapter on New Zealand—and his mode of travel was then so de luxe and his sojourn in a country so short that one felt that anything he wrote about it would not be of much value. It was different in 1896 when he set out with two companions, Edward Lunn and F. H. Lowe, from London to pedal round the world on a bike. Fraser was then 28 and had not been spoiled by success. The journey he and his mates were attempting—to cycle round the Northern Hemisphere, through Europe, Asia, and America— was a real test of courage, skill, and endurance of a high order, and, so far as I know, the feat has never been repeated, though every country has better roads now than it had in 1896. The distance travelled by the trio of "circumpedalists"—to coin a word on the analogy of "circumnavigator" was 19,237 miles, and the total time taken from London back to London was 774 days. The route was from Antwerp up the Rhine Valley and across Bavaria to Austria, entered at Brunau, Hitler's birthplace. It was on the border of Hungary that the bad roads commenced, and continued, with few stretches of rideable track, through Rumania, Southern Russia, the Caucasus, Armenia, and Persia, until the pedalists reached the Grand Trunk Road in India.

The conditions of life in the | countries traversed were bad in 18$b, and one of the worst, hardships the travellers had to face was the food. It was impossible to carry stocks on the bikes,-which they had to push for more miles than they rode,, and they had to "live on the land," sharing the poor fare of the peasantry. Many times they went hungry and halts had to be made for various periods in more favoured spots to recuperate from privations and sickness. It was an age when cycling had reached its peak— the motor-car had hardly appeared on the road —and their machines stood the strain very well, though they had a number of mishaps. Several times in passing through the mountains of Persia they were in grave danger from snowstorms or from hostile inhabitants. High lights were the visits to the Shah of Persia and . some of his satraps in the provinces. In India the travellers struck great heat, just as they had met with extreme cold in Persia, where they celebrated Christmas.

The crux of the v/hole expedition came in the crossing from Burma to China. How did they do it? They pedalled in the mud, through pouring rain, "from Rangoon to Mandalay," took a boat up the Irrawaddy to Bhamo, and thence crossed into' China by the "Burma Road." But it was not the Burma Road of international fame today, pictured in a book recently reviewed in this column; it was simply Marco Polo's old track, perfectly impassable to any wheeled vehicle other than a bicycle. When one thinks of Mr. Nicol Smith's travel de luxe narrated in his "Burma Road" and what the Foster Fraser trio had. to put up with forty years before on bikes, not VB's, the comparison ancl contrast are all to the credit of the three Britons. It was in July, 1897, that the party crossed into China over a rickety suspension bridge, and, says the author, "it was on the afternoon of Saturday preceding August Bank Holiday of 1897 that we reached Teng-Yueh, the first big Chinese city on our way." It was not until December 23 that they entered Shanghai, where a colleague of mine, "C 0.," remembers meeting them. Their worst troubles were over, after a journey of 151 days from Yunnan through the mountains of central inland China to Chung-king, Chiang Kai-shek's much-bombed capital, and thence down the Yangtze to Ichang and overland to Hankow and Suchau. It was a terrible country to traverse, in many parts almost unexplored by white men. The pedalists crossed range after range, rising.again and again to over 8000 feet and once to 9100, said by the author to be "the highest part of any road in China at, that moment." All through this gruelling period of their journey the travellers seldom had a decent meal and many times had to run the gauntlet as "foreign devils." Fortunately, they came through, worn and gaunt, but alive. Fraser's story of this part of the journey is the best of the book. It seems as if the hardships he suffered had purged his style of a rather annoy, ing, flippant, smart snappiness characteristic of his account of the earlier stages, and apparent again in the narrative of their trip through Japan.

The last stage was across the United States from San Francisco to New York, and here again in the roadless west —it was long before the motor-car had given America good roads —thare were many hardships and much bad food td be endured. The travellers were not too favourably impressed with America and the Americans, and "the author is especially scathing about Chicago. It was towards the end of the Wild West period of American history and there was no great friendliness to strangers. The trio left London on July 17, 1896; they re-entered the city from the West on August 29, 1898. They had performed a great feat. The narrative is Foster Fraser's best and the reproduction of photos, at a time when the half-tone process Voas just coming into common use, adds materially to the value of the book./which, on all scores, is well wprth Sl place in any library of travel.