Golfing Around the World
Chapter II Down the Fairway.
When you are in France you are, to all intents and purposes still at home. I set sail on my great adventure from Monaco, steaming out after a bad evening at the tables. There remained but seven francs of loose chainge, which sum, belng below the puntable minimum, I could not lose, and happily they had declined to cash a traveller's cheque.
There lay the peerless "IMPERATRICE" riding to her anchors in the moonlight, the ref!ections from her brilliant deck lights shimmering in the water. Shoreward, a cluster of scintillating jewels with the flares of emerald and ruby marking the entrance to the dainty little harbour, lying snugly ensconsed below the rocks of Monaco and Monte Carlo.
The "IMPERATRICE" was a sumptuous ship with her seven decks above the water line, and heaven knows how many beneath it. She contrived to give you all the pleasure of yachting without any of its usual discomforts. She was over eighteen thousand tons and burnt oil fuel, steady as a rock in any sea, and always sweet and clean
I lived down near the after end of "Step Over Alley" so called because you had to pass through seven bulkheads and on the sill of eaoh watertight door was a necessary warning to step over it. There being about four or five times as much accommodation as our complement of passengers needed, we had the run of the whole ship, so that if one desired to evade or avoid a meeting, it was easy enough to do so, and everyone had a state-room to himself, and sometimes two or three. I knew of at least two private "bars" on the ship, real havens of refuge and good cheer when we ran into a "dry" port.
My first morning at sea was thus an unending thrill of pleasant surprises and discoveries. My only shock was the appalling ignoranoe of geography displayed by some of my fellow passengers. We were heading for Naples in a clear, sunny and sparkling sea, Corsica lay astern on the starboard quarter, and on the port side nearly abeam rose a wild and rugged mountainous island. It looked surprisingly beautiful rising out of a sea of sapphire blue.
"Say what is that island?" exclaimed a fair American who was standing in the doorway of the companion.
"I think it is 'Elbur'" volunteered her equally fair companion slurring her r's.
All would have been well if an extremely assured and outrageously misinformed young compatriot had not declared that it was Corsica, and that we had passed Elba hours ago.
"Well now, so thats Corsica, isn't it just cute?" said the first lady, delighted to have verified the birth place of Napoleon when in fact she was admiring the romantic scene of the 'Hundred Days'.
It may seem meticulous to object to such innocent inaccuracy, but what would you have said if someone had mistaken the Isle of Man for Ireland.
Pianosa is quite as flat as a perfect pancake, and Monte Cristo another enchanting island is the most conical piece of land I have ever seen. It 1s a most alluring experience to see land and islands from the sea, even though you know there is no likelihood of going ashore.
I imagine there is golf of sorts near Naples, but tbe obsession and the nostalgia had not yet laid hold of me, and I merely enjoyed and saw the sights instead. When one realiaes that Pompeii is two thousand years old it is an amazing place. Compared with the crudities revealed by the history of the intervening years it portrays the Roman Civilisetion as something not very dissimilar to our own. The pictures on the walls of the houses and those preserved in the museum at Nap1es might have been the work of modern French or British schools of art.
Naples impressed me with its orderliness, prosperity, and industry. Its castles are numerous and enormous, and its military statuary is remarkable for the wealth of whiskers thus rendered immortal in stone. The series of narrow streets descending between tall houses from the Castle of San Mart1no to the Via Roma are extremely picturesque with their pink and yellow walls, iron railed balconies and green shutters. They are interesting too on account of the number of craftsmen to be seen at work, and the din of the ooppersmiths is not unpleasant. Every day seems to be washing day and every other shop sells soap.
I wonder what is the age of the Neapolitan paving stones, they seemed to be about a yard square, and here and there were a few missing, a fact which added greatly to the thrills of a motor tour of the city, and which quite unwarrantedly prejudices some pernickety travel1ers against the whole Italian nation. Entirely wrongheaded fastidiousness - if some of our leading municipalities would but follow this excel1ent example of leaaving 'ill' alone they would go a long way to solve their traffic problems.
Somewhere near the south of Italy, there is said to be a revolving island. This vivacious and startling fact I have had from unimpeachable authority who has not seen it. Tourist agencies are terribly supine, they never by any chance lead one off the beaten track. I oonfess I should like to see this revolutionary piece of land, aye and dwell in it. Think of its versatility and how intriguing it would be to live in a house with an orbital aspect. True, I saw the whirlpools in the Straits of Messina, but the imperturbable "Imperatrice" made nothing of them and no Orphean lute was necessary to avert the lures of Scylla and Charybdis. We pursued a voyage of even tenour and springlike calm across the exceedingly blue Mediterranian
I found the life on board attractive from the saltwater douche in the morning to the last stroll around the deck at midnight. From the marvellous assortment of dishes offered at every meal to the strains of an exoellent band one could have exactly what one pleased and what I may say pleased one. There was a constant supply of congenial companions for any form of deck sport or smokeroom pastimes and many accomplished and amusing conversationalists. If one enjoyed the mild ambling to music that nowadays passes for dancing, the band obliged for an hour or so at tea time and during most of the evening.
Everyone is a collector of sorts, I try to be a collector of places, and every year I make it a pleasant rule to visit some spot or town I have never seen before. It is a fascinating end harmless amusement. In my collection are a number of specimens, passed through or seen in the distance, and therefore claimed and docketed. For instance I have never landed on Heligoland but I have seen it, and therefore pace Lord Salisbury, if it still exists, it is mine. In a similar fashion I own Switzerland, having just glimpsed a Swiss Peak across the mountains of Savoie: Mexico is another priceless possession, I actually painted a picture of it: and now here I put in a claim for Crete, seeing that I distinctly saw the dark loom of the land and the coast lights as we steamed along its Southern shores at midnight.
And so coming to anchor in the shadow of Mount Carmel, and within sight of snow-capped Hermon, forty miles away, we entered the Holy Land.
Palestine possesses a marvelloua atmosphere. In what one may suppose to be its normal climate in winter, that is to say, brilliant sunshine by day, and a more or less intense cold by night, visibility is well nigh perfect. Horizontal vlsion might carry the eye as far as the stars were it not for the curvature of the earth and the obstructing mountains. The Dead Sea is eighteen to twenty miles from the Mount of Olives; yet, standing on the latter eminenoe, some 2,500 feet high it almost seems as if you could land a good tee shot in the middle of the great blue lake, nearly 4,000 feet below.
That sounds queer and almost inaccurate, but strange as it is. it is true, for the Dead Sea lies 1,300 feet below the level of the Mediterranean. You will remember the famous despatch during the War which described tne airmen as flying so many hundred feet below the level of the sea. There is a fine highly imaginative description of this most wonderful inland sea in the "Talisman"
Thus Sir Walter Scott :- "that sea which holds no living fish in its bosom, bears no skiff on its surface.
Alas for his veracity, I saw with my own eyes a small dead fish lying in the sun on its pebbly merge, and not far off was a small schooner lying at anchor.
I enjoyed the thrill of a bathe in those ultra blue briny waters. They may be described as inconveniently bouyant: The human body becomes 'tender' like a ship in ballast; one's centre of gravity tends to rise above one's metacentre, and the head goes down and the feet come up, whioh of course, is a fatal attitude. However, so long as one floats on the back, thus restoring the ba1ance, the sensation is delightful. On emerging from the water and drying in the sun, the salt crystallises out on the body and you feel like a distant relation, as no doubt one is, of Mrs. Lot.
The road from Jerusalem to the Red Sea leads through the Wilderness of Judaea, a wild desolate tumble of mountains and rocky ravines. It is actually the modern highway to Jericho and the Jordan valley.
There are three very definite impressions acquired on the passage from Jerusalem, first the sublime view from the Mount of Olives, across the Garden of Gethsemane to the walls and domes and towers of the Holy City on one side, and adown the wilderness on the other; then the ancient unspoilt simplicity of Bethany, and finally the traditional spot where the good Samaritan rescued the derelict traveller, now marked by a dilapidated ruin.
In this same Wilderness I had a glimpse of a nomadic group of Bedouins and camel as they crossed the skyline where the road passed through a deep gorge. I had an impression of the most picturesque personsage it has ever been my lot to look upon. In his flowing robes of white, his blue head-gear his dark proud visaged mien, he was the very epitome of dignity. Undoubtedly clothes and the camel made the man.
In Bethlehem the Church of the Nativity stands outside the city, perched on a spur of rock, just on the edge of a precipice, the Field of the 8hepherds sloping away from the eminence to the Southward. It is a fine, nay a beautiful church, graceful in its simplioity. Here end there on the marble pillars of the nave and on the various carven marble shrines one may see little crosses scratched with their dagger points by the Crusaders, some eight centuries ago.
If any archeologist, better informed than I am, should throw doubt on this fact, he is spoiling a good and harmless story. At tne other church in Jerusalem, where the Holy Sepulchre is jealously tended by the Orthodox, the Moslem and the Catholic, and ignored by the Protestant, I was taken and shown the plain white marble slab, cracked diagonally across the centre, which is the reputed Sepulchre.
One could not fail to be deepJy impressed by the demeanour of the pilgrims, one of whom knelt and kissed the stone while the other prostrated himself at full length on the tomb. Amid so much that is tawdry and, to protestant notions repellent, there is far more that is fine and sincere in the perennial crusade of three of the four greatest religious organisations of the world.
I refuse to enter into an argument about the antiquity of Jerusalem, to me it is a strange and fascinating city, where one can lose oneself literally and figuratively quicker than in any locality in which I am acquainted. The warmest and most comfortable spot in Jerusalem on a chilly February afternoon is Cook's office just below the Tower of David, the veritable and authentic dwelling of David and Bathsheba.
The cooking in the few indifferent hotels is the worst in the world - Coeur de Lion and his crusaders were evidently of a similar opinion, for they named one of the narrow cobbled passages "Le Ma1cuitant" - the "Street of Bad Cookery", and if you take your way along that street today, you will hurry through to avoid the devastating and incredible odours arising from the preparation of the meals of Jerusalem. The less said about them the better.