The Tunisian's schedule from Liverpool to Quebec was nine days but, owing to the dense fogs, we were compelled to anchor for three days off the Newfoundland coast to avoid any chance of colliding with an iceberg. When the fog lifted there was no end of these huge monsters of ice in our immediate vicinity. On one side of the ship I counted sixty-five icebergs, and there were as many on the other side.
The twelfth day we pulled into Quebec and the two thousand steerage passengers were quartered in the immigration sheds awaiting inspection by the Canadian officials. I again encountered difficulty in proving that I was not a Norwegian cut-throat or a Swedish crook but finally obtained my inspection card which permitted me to go on my way.
I took a colonist train to Toronto, where I met my father, who had come from California to meet me. He had wished me Godspeed three years before from San Francisco, and he was now to cross the continent with me and help me complete the circuit. Our meeting was a joyful one. He didn't shy at my travel-worn appearance. I was dressed in an old suit which was spotted and covered with dust; I had a two-weeks' growth on my face and I needed a hair-cut and a bath. While my father waited in the station I sought the first barber shop I could find, and after an hour of cleansing at an expense of $1.55, I was ready to travel with civilised people.
Toronto was my native city and I had not visited it since I was an infant. My father and I, therefore, spent several weeks looking up friends and relatives before starting west. En route to St. Louis, I took leave of my dad, and went to visit Richardson at his home in Fairmont, Minnesota. He had returned to America four months before and we had not seen one another for nearly nine months—since we separated in Constantinople.
During my two days' visit we each outlined where we had been since parting and related to one another our different experiences. Richardson remained in Constantinople two months holding down his job of electric wiring for Roberts College. In that time he made many trips about Constantinople and its environs and became very familiar with the Turkish capital. He made a journey into the country districts and got a glimpse of village life in Turkey.
His course through Europe was somewhat similar to mine and included Greece, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, France, England and Scotland. He did not visit Austria-Hungary but spent several weeks in Germany, stopping at Munich, Nürnberg, Dresden, Leipsic and Berlin. From London he took a trip to Edinburgh, returning to Liverpool whence he crossed the Atlantic steerage to Boston. He arrived in America without a cent. Fortunately there was a letter for him at Thomas Cook and Son's office from his mother, in which was enclosed a money order for twenty-four dollars with which to buy tableclothes. He cashed the order and with the money bought a cheap ticket to Fairmont. Again broke, he arrived home after being away two years and eight months. At the time of my visit he had a position with the New York Life Insurance Company.
I joined my father in St. Louis, where I spent three days visiting a married sister, and we then continued our journey to California. My return to San Francisco was the occasion of the following article in the Examiner:
U. OF C. STUDENT GIRDLES GLOBE ON $3.85
Alfred C.B. Fletcher Travels Three Years as Teacher, Sailor and Adventurer
"Three years of adventure and 30,000 miles of travel through the seven seas ended yesterday when Alfred C.B. Fletcher, university graduate, journalist, school teacher, Government official, sailor and miner, returned to California with a Kiplingesque stock of personal experiences and jingling a silver surplus over the $3.85 with which he left San Francisco.
Fletcher was arrested as a spy in Japan, battled with pirates on a Chinese junk in the Chinese sea, visited Bethlehem on Christmas Day, attended the Durbar in India, toiled in a mine of Norway and has returned from the rough and tumble of world adventure to study theology for Orders in the Episcopal Church.
LEADER IN UNIVERSITY
In 1907 Fletcher graduated from the University of California, where he was a leading figure on the campus. He was editor of the Daily Californian, prominent in other affairs, and a member of the Golden Bear and Winged Helmet honour societies and the Psi Upsilon fraternity.
Norwegian Wireless Station in Ice Fjord
Three years ago he decided to take a graduate course in the school of hard knocks and see the world on his nerve and native hardihood. He bought a steamer ticket to Honolulu and waved good-bye to his friends at the pier with a promise that he would not return until he had swung around the belt of the Globe.
At Honolulu he halted for lack of funds to get him further transportation and entered the business of school teaching. Between school periods he took examinations for work as a Government official on the Pearl Harbour project, more from curiosity than a desire to quit school teaching. His examination marks were high and he was appointed.
TRAVELS ON EARNINGS
Several months of Pearl Harbour work got him money enough to go on, and he travelled for several months on the earnings. On this leg of the journey he was accompanied by a young Dartmouth graduate whose method of travel was akin to his own.
While in Japan they snapshotted pictures of Japanese fortifications and were arrested and thrown into prison. The services of the Secretary of State were secured before the two young college travellers were liberated. For the rest of their visit in Japan they were shadowed by agents of the Japanese Government, and they found the pursuit so uncomfortable that they shortened their stay.
In China Fletcher became instructor in a Peking school of engineering. He travelled leisurely down the coast to Hongkong, making inland trips and long stays in all the great ports of China.
By the time he reached Hongkong his finances were low and a trip across the China sea to Manila was made in a junk. On the voyage a typhoon struck the rickety craft, and the Chinese, believing they were lost, flocked around the images of their gods with shrieks of terror. Fletcher rushed to the deck, saw the danger to the unmanned ship, and compelled the Oriental sailors to return to their posts.
MORAL FORCE NECESSARY
For several months he remained in Manila, serving most of the time as an official of the Territorial Government in its department of education. From there he journeyed on to India and witnessed the Durbar spectacle.
His travel was broken by spells of work on land. Frequently he signed on steamers as sailor or deckhand. A long stay was made in Palestine. From the eastern Mediterranean he went up into France and England and, for the first time in years, looked into familiar faces. Many of his former college friends were travelling in Paris, London and studying at Oxford.
The experience in Europe took his last cent and he worked his way to Spitzbergen, Norway, where a friend of college days is superintendent of a mine. There he spent several months and gathered sufficient funds to insure his return to California.
Fletcher is visiting his brother, John D. Fletcher, at 2320 Le Conte Street, Berkeley. For a few days he will renew old associations around the university and after a visit to his home at Covina in the southern part of the state he will leave for New York to enter a theological seminary."
Three days in the vicinity of San Francisco, and I went to my home in Southern California. When in Toronto I had bought a ticket to Los Angeles and return, for I had planned to go to New York City to enter a theological seminary. I might state parenthetically that after six months of study for the ministry, I came to the conclusion I was in the wrong pew and gave it up. The change from a tramp to an embryo parson was too sudden, I suppose. The price of the round-trip ticket from Toronto and my expenses to California had taken the last of my Norwegian earnings and I arrived home broke. I had been away three years, had circled the globe and had travelled over sixty thousand miles.