We were also shown the spot where Winston Churchill was supposed to have swum the river when he escaped from Pretoria during the Boer War. I expected to see a broad stream, or at least a raging torrent; something representing some sort of a difficulty at all events. Instead, I was confronted with what was in effect little more than a placidly flowing brook, deep perhaps, but so narrow that I could easily have jumped across it had I been so minded; and which, as a matter of fact, I did do later on.
It reminded me of another disappointment in connection with a river, that befell me while I was travelling in the United States of America. I was shown a muddy, sluggish, malodorous little stream, meandering through a swamp in Florida.
“See that river?” asked my guide.
“I see a dirty little ditch,” I replied; “and I can smell it too.”
“That river, sir,” corrected my guide, “is famous. Its name is known wherever the English language is spoken.”
“Oh!” I said. “What’s it called?”
“The Swanee River!” answered the guide.
And to-day, and ever since, whenever an orchestra anywhere strikes up the well-known air of “Way down upon the Swanee River,” like a flash memory calls up unbidden the image of that slimy, alligator-infested creek in the Florida Everglades.
I took a prize giant out to South Africa with me; “Scotty,” the King’s biggest and heaviest subject. He measured seven feet in height, and weighed considerably over thirty stone.
On the liner, going out, his huge bulk was accommodated in a double cabin; two ordinary cabins knocked into one. Of course it was all done for advertisement; a rather costly advertisement, by the way; but as the company I was travelling with paid all fares this didn’t trouble me.