WANDERINGS.

Southland Times, Issue 14634, 26 January 1911, Page 2

WANDERINGS.

Or aw intxbcaechli. citizeh. JIB J- THOMSON’S OBSER VAT lON S. 111. NORMANDY. We have been allowed to make extracts from private letters written by Mr Thomson during his Continental trip last July. The following are from letters written from Paris and Lucerne: — Half the charm of these old cities consists not in their present but in their past. There is no foot of their soil which has not been the scene and setting of unnumbered tragedies and comedies. The spoiler has spoiled, and The avenger has stricken in every ravine and on every hilltop. Here or there tradition or history lias preserved some shadow of the dim doings of the dead past, but only the rugged out- • lines of great events. All the struggles, strivings, and ambitions of the millions have vanished like the smoke wreaths of yesterday. From wtiat we know of humanity now, and from what we know of the conditions of life hundreds, even thousands, of years ago, we can in some measure reconstruct the drama; see In Imagination our ancestors tear their living from the sea and soil; crown their strong men chiefs, and hound their weak ones to Gehenna. New Zealand has In this sense no history, or only such history as is buried in Europe deep in the soil, and the records of it stone chisels and axes and gravel. About the age of these scientists pelt each other lightly with years.-fifty thousand to the handful. New Zealand’s stone age was of yesterday. Smiling Normandy has been a land fought about and worth fighting about since anything reliable In human records has been kept. It was the nest In which that great conquering race, the Normans, rested awhile and gathered strength for conquest. About 1000 years ago they came from Normandy, entered the mouth of the Seine, seized the land and held it. A horde of savages, but as - ferocious and fearless as bulldog ants. They were as inferior to the French In arts and civilisation as the Chinese are to ourselves, but stark robbers every one, without fear and without conscience. They took whatever was worth taking and enslaved the inhabitants —but just here the horn governing race showed Us quality. The conuuerors adopted the arts and civilisation of the conquered; stranger still, they adopted their language and religion. The Normans remained lords and masters of the soil, but they welded themselves Into the life of the people by a common tongue and a common faith. In o ; him ll red anil lii'ty years they placed Normandy In the front of all the North ern countries of Europe. The best roads, the best bridges, the best churches tlii' best cultivated and most prosperous country, and above all and beyond all and rendering all the others possible, the strongest castles. Then so me SSO years ago they turned their attention to England, conquered it and gave England a succession of Norman kings. Every brat of Norman hoy, after his elders and betters had grabbed their grab, got his grant of English land, rounded up the natives and forced them to build him a castle of the Norman pattern. They have endured even unto this time, a groat calm conquering Em-pire-making breed. When the remnants of them are finally ground under the hoofs of democracy, and ability to bellow balderdash alone is accepted as the hail murk of heaven born leaders, England will be just about'ripe for another conquest. The evolution of these Normans in the mill of the gods, "that grind so slow and grind so exceedingly small,” is a problem to speculate on. 1 fancy them 1 away buck us the last ice age was ending, a weak, invertebrate sort of people forced buck by stronger races to the very verge of the melting icn cap that then covered so much of Europe. Back, back until the Arctic Ocean running dull in Norwegian fiords halted them, and they stood at bay forced to battle for a living between tile . inhospitable sea and the barren i landland. Age after age of tierce war i fighting for life, the strong alone sur- 1 viving, the feeble trodden out, strength- ■ ening as the centuries passed until the j weakest became strongest, evolving gods | for the needs of their strenuous lives. I Thor anil Odin, with the heaven of Val- I halla, where their warrior dead rioted in the joy of never ending battles by j day and feasting and drinking by night, j On tills anvil were they hammered out j and purified ant! made strong with a i strength that endurelh even to this I day. The mill of the gods lias never i slowed nor halted in all these ages. 1 There is no abiding place even yet | where the futile or the feeble in men or nations cun hide from doom. Kural Scenes. The country between Dieppe and Rouen is undulating rather than hilly. The railway opens up one picturesque nook after another. The worst of a country like tills from it traveller's point of view is that there is so little view. As yon rush along (lie low levels hemmed In liy swelling ridges, you see quaint buildings, grassy slopes, orchards sleeping peacefully in the afternoon sun, woods, and country roads. All the peace of rural England that envelops the spirit of the Weary wayfarer like the breath of Eden is there. The antipodean struggle to live looks a far away thing. You are in the vales of Avalon. What there may be a mile away on either side you may guess, but you can’t know. The mystery of the unknown adds to the glamour. Vou think of the Normans who wrought and rioted here fur 150 years: you think how all. these peaceful folds of Mother Earth were harried and hunted and spoiled by English -Army after English Army; you think how red war with fire and sword and gaunt famine following after was seldom absent during the centuries: and worst of all when war and famine were not there the feudal lords were an ever-present scourge until the revolution swept them from the earth, "cast them as rubbish to the void.” Coming from a land without a | history, imagination revels as your 'eyes look on scenes where Immunity lias | been so ground in the mill of the gods, ! perfected or at least made belter through suffering. The Seine Valley. . At Rouen the country flattens out, the valley of the Seim, is reached. The Heine is a line river, navigable lo I’.iris for small cruft, and to Rouen for ocean-going steamers. Rouen is an im- i portant town, the capital of (lie Nor- i man country, it lies back from (be ! river over swelling ridges. The lam!- | scape is dominated by the cathedral, a j world-famed monument of pious cnib-a-vour. its finest tower was built with 1 money paid for indulgences to cat j butter in Rent—a successful sale of j gold bricks. A town of active piety; . they burned Joan of Arc here. I From Rouen to Paris, when 1 say j that tho river is navigable, you can ■ understand that the country is level, a fair and pleasant land, dappled in all , its expanse by the lilliputiaa fanning J of Prance. These microscopical free- ! hold farmers are better than feudal lords, but they don't really appeal to , me. Little as they arc, a big number ! of the allotments had a run-out look, j as if they had been cropped and cropped I until the wearied soil had struck week, j They are not garden allotments, and ; they are not farms —neither fish, flesh, i nur good red herring. Hucli English j garden allotments as I have seen were ' really intensively cultivated. Hpade j work and plenty of manure and a prodi- )'

gal profusion of growth. I am a firm believer in the little farm well tilled, but surely there is a practical limit tc l.ttlenoss. The old feudal law that gave all the landed estate to the eldest son of a family was unreasonable and unjust, but the other extreme that divides a farm again and again among succeeding generations of children until one liop, skip, and jump will carry you over many landed estates is almost as stupidly wrong. Tho feudal second son had to turn out and -.make a . hole somewhere in the world that he ’ could fit himself into, and he had all the delight of striving and doing, but the j French heir to an acre of land is like a galley slave chained to the oar. This I is how I feel. It Is possible, however, j that these reflections are made on matj j tors imperfectly comprehended. You j : can't suck in exhaustive knowledge j , about a country from the window of a i railway train. The facts, however, to be accounted for are why are the I patches of cultivated land so small? and , -why have so many of the crops such ■ a lean and hungry look? , ! Paris. 1 i There are no towns of importance in ! • the valley of tho Seme between Rouen and Paris. Judging from recent experiences it won’t be a choice location for towns. Before our visit you would see 1 ail about it in the telegrams. The who'o Valley of the Seine was flooded, and all the low parts of Paris were under water. Boats took the place of cabs in the streets, and first-floor windows replaced front doors. Now all was peace; tbe river with many' windings flowed calmly to the sea, smiling in sunshine as if it had never done a wrong thing. Presently the well-known outlines of the Eiffel tower spiderwebbed themselves against the sky. The villa residences became more numerous and increased in splendour. AVe began to pass slrings of double-decked railway carriages packed with passengers, their day's labour ended, being wheeled hone to their wives and families. AVe crossed the fortification that held back the Germans, but could not pi event Uie city from being starved into submission, and we were In Paris. \ The St. Lazare station is well in the heart of Paris. Near the Mecca of religious Paris the Madeline Church, the shrine of fashionable Paris, the Opera House, the , streets haunted by rich Americans where each shop window shimmers with diamonds. Tins knowledge came later. We missed the pen into wliicli the Polys were long herded, and lost ourselves. It is a big station, not so big as most of the London stations, but just as populous. There seemed to our bewildered eyes to be about liny million Frenchmen all in a state of frantic haste and noise, all going in different directions, and ail at top speed. Scientists describe how tho MUmale electrons behave themselves Inside tlie atom. Just so, and no otherwise was it; only I picture electrons as silent. but every Frenchman wa: as full of noise as a suffragette meeting, and was letting it all go, AVe were a little party of strayed antipodean lambs unable to bleat so as to make ourselves heard, much less understood. The Polytechnic Paris manager, a gentleman of the sinewy razor-edged quick-eyed variety, noticed file strays. “Are yon Mr T., Airs T.. Miss T., and Miss H.?"—he had the names as pat as if he were reading them from a book. ’’Come with me. One cab would, take you, but take two, you may as well lie comfortable, and we pay." He packed ns in, gave the cabby our address, arid told us to ask the hotel to pay the cabs, and away we went, and the Poly. Paris manager rushed away to round up the rest of liis (lock. We were taken to a hotel like a rural villa on the banks of the Seine with a wide reach of trot-embowered road hiding the waters of the river in front of it. brilliant motor-cars resplendent with glass and brass and buttony chal'feurs ■ flashed past each other among the trees —no speed limit, go as you please, and Rill as many as yon can They killed one young lady that evening whose hobble skirt would not allow her to run. The hotel proprietor received ns with French genuflections, but stiffened when we said tile Poly, manager had instructed us to ask him to pay , tiie cahs. The head waiter bowed l>e- ; fore us as if we .had been Royalty, but j somebody in the direction of the floor I must have used sign language, for ibis hack<**M ili'eued and ills nose curled j upwards, and lie said interrogatively, i “Poly, party?” f read Ibis to moan that I Poly, parlies are not Just the gold i mines to French Withers that American j millionaires are. As the rooms wer.' ! clean and comfortable, tho appointments |of the hotel luxurious, and the food ! good, we were content with the head j waiter's estimate of Ills prospects. He ! was not taking any risks by expending | stores of civility which might go un- ■ rewarded, and we thought that by this I conservative policy he was taking the sure way to bring his sagacious forecast true.