Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes
My Dear Sidney Colvin,
The journey which this little book is to describe was very
agreeable and fortunate for me. After an uncouth beginning, I had
the best of luck to the end. But we are all travellers in what
John Bunyan calls the wilderness of this world - all, too,
travellers with a donkey: and the best that we find in our travels
is an honest friend. He is a fortunate voyager who finds many. We
travel, indeed, to find them. They are the end and the reward of
life. They keep us worthy of ourselves; and when we are alone, we
are only nearer to the absent.
Every book is, in an intimate sense, a circular letter to the
friends of him who writes it. They alone take his meaning; they
find private messages, assurances of love, and expressions of
gratitude, dropped for them in every corner. The public is but a
generous patron who defrays the postage. Yet through the letter is
directed to all, we have an old and kindly custom of addressing it
on the outside to one. Of what shall a man be proud, if he is not
proud of his friends? And so, my dear Sidney Colvin, it is with
pride that I sign myself affectionately yours,
R. L. S.
VELAY
Many are the mighty things, and nought is more mighty than man. . .
. . He masters by his devices the tenant of the fields.
SOPHOCLES.
Who hath loosed the bands of the wild ass?
JOB.
THE DONKEY, THE PACK, AND THE PACK-SADDLE
IN a little place called Le Monastier, in a pleasant highland
valley fifteen miles from Le Puy, I spent about a month of fine
days. Monastier is notable for the making of lace, for
drunkenness, for freedom of language, and for unparalleled
political dissension. There are adherents of each of the four
French parties - Legitimists, Orleanists, Imperialists, and
Republicans - in this little mountain-town; and they all hate,
loathe, decry, and calumniate each other. Except for business
purposes, or to give each other the lie in a tavern brawl, they
have laid aside even the civility of speech. 'Tis a mere mountain
Poland. In the midst of this Babylon I found myself a rallying-
point; every one was anxious to be kind and helpful to the
stranger. This was not merely from the natural hospitality of
mountain people, nor even from the surprise with which I was
regarded as a man living of his own free will in Le Monastier, when
he might just as well have lived anywhere else in this big world;
it arose a good deal from my projected excursion southward through
the Cevennes. A traveller of my sort was a thing hitherto unheard
of in that district. I was looked upon with contempt, like a man
who should project a journey to the moon, but yet with a respectful
interest, like one setting forth for the inclement Pole. All were
ready to help in my preparations; a crowd of sympathisers supported
me at the critical moment of a bargain; not a step was taken but
was heralded by glasses round and celebrated by a dinner or a
breakfast.
It was already hard upon October before I was ready to set forth,
and at the high altitudes over which my road lay there was no
Indian summer to be looked for. I was determined, if not to camp
out, at least to have the means of camping out in my possession;
for there is nothing more harassing to an easy mind than the
necessity of reaching shelter by dusk, and the hospitality of a
village inn is not always to be reckoned sure by those who trudge
on foot. A tent, above all for a solitary traveller, is
troublesome to pitch, and troublesome to strike again; and even on
the march it forms a conspicuous feature in your baggage. A
sleeping-sack, on the other hand, is always ready - you have only
to get into it; it serves a double purpose - a bed by night, a
portmanteau by day; and it does not advertise your intention of
camping out to every curious passer-by. This is a huge point. If
a camp is not secret, it is but a troubled resting-place; you
become a public character; the convivial rustic visits your bedside
after an early supper; and you must sleep with one eye open, and be
up before the day. I decided on a sleeping-sack; and after
repeated visits to Le Puy, and a deal of high living for myself and
my advisers, a sleeping-sack was designed, constructed, and
triumphantly brought home.
This child of my invention was nearly six feet square, exclusive of
two triangular flaps to serve as a pillow by night and as the top
and bottom of the sack by day. I call it 'the sack,' but it was
never a sack by more than courtesy: only a sort of long roll or
sausage, green waterproof cart-cloth without and blue sheep's fur
within. It was commodious as a valise, warm and dry for a bed.
There was luxurious turning room for one; and at a pinch the thing
might serve for two. I could bury myself in it up to the neck; for
my head I trusted to a fur cap, with a hood to fold down over my
ears and a band to pass under my nose like a respirator; and in
case of heavy rain I proposed to make myself a little tent, or
tentlet, with my waterproof coat, three stones, and a bent branch.
It will readily be conceived that I could not carry this huge
package on my own, merely human, shoulders. It remained to choose
a beast of burden. Now, a horse is a fine lady among animals,
flighty, timid, delicate in eating, of tender health; he is too
valuable and too restive to be left alone, so that you are chained
to your brute as to a fellow galley-slave; a dangerous road puts
him out of his wits; in short, he's an uncertain and exacting ally,
and adds thirty-fold to the troubles of the voyager. What I
required was something cheap and small and hardy, and of a stolid
and peaceful temper; and all these requisites pointed to a donkey.
There dwelt an old man in Monastier, of rather unsound intellect
according to some, much followed by street-boys, and known to fame
as Father Adam. Father Adam had a cart, and to draw the cart a
diminutive she-ass, not much bigger than a dog, the colour of a
mouse, with a kindly eye and a determined under-jaw. There was
something neat and high-bred, a quakerish elegance, about the rogue
that hit my fancy on the spot. Our first interview was in
Monastier market-place. To prove her good temper, one child after
another was set upon her back to ride, and one after another went
head over heels into the air; until a want of confidence began to
reign in youthful bosoms, and the experiment was discontinued from
a dearth of subjects. I was already backed by a deputation of my
friends; but as if this were not enough, all the buyers and sellers
came round and helped me in the bargain; and the ass and I and
Father Adam were the centre of a hubbub for near half an hour. At
length she passed into my service for the consideration of sixty-
five francs and a glass of brandy. The sack had already cost
eighty francs and two glasses of beer; so that Modestine, as I
instantly baptized her, was upon all accounts the cheaper article.
Indeed, that was as it should be; for she was only an appurtenance
of my mattress, or self-acting bedstead on four castors.
I had a last interview with Father Adam in a billiard-room at the
witching hour of dawn, when I administered the brandy. He
professed himself greatly touched by the separation, and declared
he had often bought white bread for the donkey when he had been
content with black bread for himself; but this, according to the
best authorities, must have been a flight of fancy. He had a name
in the village for brutally misusing the ass; yet it is certain
that he shed a tear, and the tear made a clean mark down one cheek.
By the advice of a fallacious local saddler, a leather pad was made
for me with rings to fasten on my bundle; and I thoughtfully
completed my kit and arranged my toilette. By way of armoury and
utensils, I took a revolver, a little spirit-lamp and pan, a
lantern and some halfpenny candles, a jack-knife and a large
leather flask. The main cargo consisted of two entire changes of
warm clothing - besides my travelling wear of country velveteen,
pilot-coat, and knitted spencer - some books, and my railway-rug,
which, being also in the form of a bag, made me a double castle for
cold nights. The permanent larder was represented by cakes of
chocolate and tins of Bologna sausage. All this, except what I
carried about my person, was easily stowed into the sheepskin bag;
and by good fortune I threw in my empty knapsack, rather for
convenience of carriage than from any thought that I should want it
on my journey. For more immediate needs I took a leg of cold
mutton, a bottle of Beaujolais, an empty bottle to carry milk, an
egg-beater, and a considerable quantity of black bread and white,
like Father Adam, for myself and donkey, only in my scheme of
things the destinations were reversed.
Monastrians, of all shades of thought in politics, had agreed in
threatening me with many ludicrous misadventures, and with sudden
death in many surprising forms. Cold, wolves, robbers, above all
the nocturnal practical joker, were daily and eloquently forced on
my attention. Yet in these vaticinations, the true, patent danger
was left out. Like Christian, it was from my pack I suffered by
the way. Before telling my own mishaps, let me in two words relate
the lesson of my experience. If the pack is well strapped at the
ends, and hung at full length - not doubled, for your life - across
the pack-saddle, the traveller is safe. The saddle will certainly
not fit, such is the imperfection of our transitory life; it will
assuredly topple and tend to overset; but there are stones on every
roadside, and a man soon learns the art of correcting any tendency
to overbalance with a well-adjusted stone.
On the day of my departure I was up a little after five; by six, we
began to load the donkey; and ten minutes after, my hopes were in
the dust. The pad would not stay on Modestine's back for half a
moment. I returned it to its maker, with whom I had so
contumelious a passage that the street outside was crowded from
wall to wall with gossips looking on and listening. The pad
changed hands with much vivacity; perhaps it would be more
descriptive to say that we threw it at each other's heads; and, at
any rate, we were very warm and unfriendly, and spoke with a deal
of freedom.
I had a common donkey pack-saddle - a BARDE, as they call it -
fitted upon Modestine; and once more loaded her with my effects.
The doubled sack, my pilot-coat (for it was warm, and I was to walk
in my waistcoat), a great bar of black bread, and an open basket
containing the white bread, the mutton, and the bottles, were all
corded together in a very elaborate system of knots, and I looked
on the result with fatuous content. In such a monstrous deck-
cargo, all poised above the donkey's shoulders, with nothing below
to balance, on a brand-new pack-saddle that had not yet been worn
to fit the animal, and fastened with brand-new girths that might be
expected to stretch and slacken by the way, even a very careless
traveller should have seen disaster brewing. That elaborate system
of knots, again, was the work of too many sympathisers to be very
artfully designed. It is true they tightened the cords with a
will; as many as three at a time would have a foot against
Modestine's quarters, and be hauling with clenched teeth; but I
learned afterwards that one thoughtful person, without any exercise
of force, can make a more solid job than half-a-dozen heated and
enthusiastic grooms. I was then but a novice; even after the
misadventure of the pad nothing could disturb my security, and I
went forth from the stable door as an ox goeth to the slaughter.
