The chauffeur in such a race must indeed be a man of iron nerves. Through the great black goggles which shelter his face from the dust-laden hurricane set up by the speed he travels at he must keep a perpetual, piercingly keen watch. Though travelling at express speed, there are no signals to help him; he must be his own signalman as well as driver. He must mark every loose stone on the road, every inequality, every sudden rise or depression; he must calculate the curves at the corners and judge whether his mechanician, hanging out on the inward side, will enable a car to round a turn without slackening speed. His calculations and decisions must be made in the fraction of a second, for a moment’s hesitation might be disaster. His driving must be furious and not reckless; the timid chauffeur will never win, the careless one will probably lose. His head must be cool although the car leaps beneath him like a wild thing, and the wind lashes his face. At least one well-tried driver found the mere mental strain too great to bear, and retired from the contest; and we may be sure that few of the competitors slept much during the nights of the race.
At four o’clock on the 29th Fournier started on the third stage, which witnessed another bout of fast travelling. It was now a struggle between him and Antony for first place. The pace rose at times to eighty miles an hour, a speed at which our fastest expresses seldom travel. Such a speed means huge risks, for stopping, even with the powerful brakes fitted to the large cars, would be a matter of a hundred yards or more. Not far from Hanover Antony met with an accident—Girardot now held second place; and Fournier finished an easy first. All along the route crowds had cheered him, and hurled bouquets into the car, and wished him good speed; but in Berlin the assembled populace went nearly frantic at his appearance. Fournier was overwhelmed with flowers, laurel wreaths, and other offerings; dukes, duchesses, and the great people of the land pressed for presentations; he was the hero of the hour.
Thus ended what may be termed a peaceful invasion of Germany by the French. Among other things it had shown that over an immense stretch of country, over roads in places bad as only German roads can be, the automobile was able to maintain an average speed superior to that of the express trains running between Paris and Berlin; also that, in spite of the large number of cars employed in the race, the accidents to the public were a negligible quantity. It should be mentioned that the actual time occupied by Fournier was 16 hours 5 minutes; that out of the 109 starters 47 reached Berlin; and that Osmont on a motor cycle finished only 3 hours and 10 minutes behind the winner.
In England such racing would be undesirable and impossible, owing to the crookedness of our roads. It would certainly not be permissible so long as the 12 miles an hour limit is observed. At the present time an agitation is on foot against this restriction, which, though reasonable enough among traffic and in towns, appears unjustifiable in open country. To help to convince the magisterial mind of the ease with which a car can be stopped, and therefore of its safety even at comparatively high speeds, trials were held on January 2, 1902, in Welbeck Park. The results showed that a car travelling at 13 miles an hour could be stopped dead in 4 yards; at 18 miles in 7 yards; at 20 miles in 13 yards; or in less than half the distance required to pull up a horse-vehicle driven at similar speeds.
Uses.—Ninety-five per cent of motors, at least in England, are attached to pleasure vehicles, cycles, voiturettes, and large cars. On account of the costliness of cars motorists are far less numerous than cyclists; but those people whose means enable them to indulge in automobilism find it extremely fascinating. Caricaturists have presented to us in plenty the gloomier incidents of motoring—the broken chain, the burst tyre, the “something gone wrong.” It requires personal experience to understand how lightly these mishaps weigh against the exhilaration of movement, the rapid change of scene, the sensation of control over power which can whirl one along tirelessly at a pace altogether beyond the capacities of horseflesh. If proof were wanted of the motor car’s popularity it will be seen in the unconventional dress of the chauffeur. The breeze set up by his rapid rush is such as would penetrate ordinary clothing; he dons cumbrous fur cloaks. The dust is all-pervading at times; he swathes himself in dust-proof overalls, and mounts large goggles edged with velvet, while a cap of semi-nautical cut tightly drawn down over neck and ears serves to protect those portions of his anatomy. The general effect is peculiarly unpicturesque; but even the most artistically-minded driver is ready to sacrifice appearances to comfort and the proper enjoyment of his car.
In England the great grievance of motorists arises from the speed limit imposed by law. To restrict a powerful car to twelve miles an hour is like confining a thoroughbred to the paces of a broken-down cab horse. Careless driving is unpardonable, but its occasional existence scarcely justifies the intolerant attitude of the law towards motorists in general. It must, however, be granted in justice to the police that the chauffeur, from constant transgression of the law, becomes a bad judge of speed, and often travels at a far greater velocity than he is willing to admit.
The convenience of the motor car for many purposes is immense, especially for cross-country journeys, which may be made from door to door without the monotony or indirectness of railway travel. It bears the doctor swiftly on his rounds. It carries the business man from his country house to his office. It delivers goods for the merchant; parcels for the post office.
In the warfare of the future, too, it will play its part, whether to drag heavy ordnance and stores, or to move commanding officers from point to point, or perform errands of mercy among the wounded. By the courtesy of the Locomobile Company we are permitted to append the testimony of Captain R. S. Walker, R.E., to the usefulness of a car during the great Boer War.
“Several months ago I noticed a locomobile car at Cape Town, and being struck with its simplicity and neatness, bought it and took it up country with me, with a view to making some tests with it over bad roads, &c. Its first trip was over a rough course round Pretoria, especially chosen to find out defects before taking it into regular use. Naturally, as the machine was not designed for this class of work, there were several. In about a month these had all been found out and remedied, and the car was in constant use, taking stores, &c., round the towns and forts. It also performed some very useful work in visiting out-stations, where searchlights were either installed or wanted, and in this way visited nearly all the bigger towns in the Transvaal. It was possible to go round all the likely positions for a searchlight in one day at every station, which frequently meant considerably over fifty miles of most indifferent roads—more than a single horse could have been expected to do—and the car generally carried two persons on these occasions. The car was also used as a tender to a searchlight plant, on a gun-carriage and limber, being utilised to fetch gasolene, carbons, water, &c., &c., and also to run the dynamo for charging the accumulators used for sparking, thus saving running the gasolene motor for this purpose. To do this the trail of the carriage, on which was the dynamo, was lowered on to the ground, the back of the car was pulled up, one wheel being supported on the dynamo pulley and the other clear of the ground, and two bolts were passed through the balance-gear to join it. On one occasion the car ran a 30 c.m. searchlight for an hour, driving a dynamo in this way. In consequence of this a trailer has been made to carry a dynamo and projector for searchlighting in the field, but so far this has not been so used. The trailer hooks into an eye, passing just behind the balance-gear. A Maxim, Colt, or small ammunition cart, &c., could be attached to this same eye.
“Undoubtedly the best piece of work done by the car so far was its trial trip with the trailer, when it blew up the mines at Klein Nek. These mines were laid some eight months previously, and had never been looked to in the interval. There had been several bad storms, the Boers and cattle had been frequently through the Nek, it had been on fire, and finally it was shelled with lyddite. The mines, eighteen in number, were found to be intact except two, which presumably had been fired off by the heat of the veldt fire. All the insulation was burnt off the wires, and the battery was useless. It had been anticipated that a dynamo exploder would be inadequate to fire these mines, so a 250 volt two h.p. motor, which happened to be in Pretoria, weighing about three or four hundredweight, was placed on the trailer; a quarter of a mile of insulated cable, some testing gear, the kits of three men and their rations for three days, with a case of gasolene for the car, were also carried on the car and trailer, and the whole left Pretoria one morning and trekked to Rietfontein. Two of us were mounted, the third drove the car. At Rietfontein we halted for the night, and started next morning with an escort through Commando Nek, round the north of the Magaliesburg, to near Klein Nek, where the road had to be left, and the car taken across country through bush veldt. At the bottom the going was pretty easy; only a few bushes had to be charged down, and the grass, &c., rather wound itself around the wheels and chain. As the rise became steeper the stones became very large, and the car had to be taken along very gingerly to prevent breaking the wheels. A halt was made about a quarter of a mile from the top of the Nek, where the mines were. These were reconnoitered, and the wire, &c., was picked up; that portion which was useless was placed on top of the charges, and the remainder taken to the car. The dynamo was slid off the trailer, the car backed against it; one wheel was raised slightly and placed against the dynamo pulley, which was held up to it by a man using his rifle as a lever; the other wheel was on the ground with a stone under it. The balance gear being free, the dynamo was excited without the other wheel moving, and the load being on for a very short time (that is, from the time of touching lead on dynamo terminal to firing of the mine) no harm could come to the car. When all the leads had been joined to the dynamo the car was started, and after a short time, when it was judged to have excited, the second terminal was touched, a bang and clouds of dust resulted, and the Klein Nek Minefield had ceased to exist. The day was extremely hot, and the work had not been light, so the tea, made with water drawn direct from the boiler, which we were able to serve round to the main body of our escort was much appreciated, and washed down the surplus rations we dispensed with to accommodate the battery and wire, which we could not leave behind for the enemy.