Curiously enough, fat and sugar were the things equally most missed by a party of Canadian explorers who were engaged one winter in finding the pass by which the Canadian Pacific Railway crossed the Rocky Mountains. Their leader, who was running a small steamer up from Golden City to the source of the Columbia in Lake Windermere, told me so, when I was a passenger with him. I had just shot a wild goose on a shoal with my Winchester rifle from the deck of the steamer, and he had come out of his cabin to see what the matter was.
I had a unique experience at that Canadian Lake Windermere. I was lying flat on my back in the reedy shallows at its edge, enjoying a bath in water above human temperature, when a deputation of ranchers waited on me to ask if I would act as judge in the annual horse-races for Red Indians, which were to be held that afternoon. They had heard that an author had come up with the steamer from Golden City, and wished to pay me this unique compliment. I protested my inexperience in the matter, but dressed and accompanied them to a sort of pulpit made of fresh lumber, which I occupied while half-a-dozen races were run on little barebacked horses (I wondered if these were mustangs, but did not dare to show my ignorance by inquiring) by naked braves and squaws in trousers with a feather trimming down the seam. As I escaped uninjured, I suppose that my judgments were accepted. Colonel Baker, a brother of Valentine and Sir Samuel, was one of the deputation.
In the time of which I am writing, when people came back from the wilds, it was the fashion to fête them at the literary clubs. In this way I met Captain Lugard, who was fresh back from his strenuous efforts in Uganda, and Mr. F. C. Selous, when he came back from his pioneer expedition to Mashonaland and Matabeleland, which led to their annexation, and the foundation of Rhodesia. Selous was the greatest hunter that England ever sent to South Africa. For twenty years he made his living as an elephant-hunter and collector of rare natural history specimens, and took the chief part in bringing about the annexation of Matabeleland. In later days he has taken a great part in the measures for preserving the wild animals of Africa by a splendid system of game laws, far stricter than our own.
Of all the author-explorers who came to Addison Mansions, I have known none so well as Arnold Henry Savage Landor, grandson of the poet Walter Savage Landor. I first met Landor at Louise Chandler Moulton’s house in Boston, on one Sunday night in 1888, when he was twenty years old, and I have seen him constantly ever since. While we were at Washington, as I have said elsewhere, he was my guest for a week. We were at Montreal together one winter season, and saw each other nearly every day, and when we got to Japan, almost the first person we saw there was Landor. We stayed in the same hotel there for months.
When we first met Landor, he was an artist, who made a considerable income by portrait-painting. It was not until after we had met in Japan that he went upon his first exploring expedition among the Hairy Ainu in the North Island of Yezo and the Kuriles.
After we left Japan, he went across to China, and went very far afield in it. But he did not achieve world-wide fame until he made his expedition into the Forbidden Land. Every one has read of the tortures to which he was subjected there, but it is not every one who met him on his way back, as we did, when his spine was so injured that he could not sit down, and his eyes still had a white film over them from being bleared with fire. I knew of his endurance, because I had seen him go out in Montreal in an ordinary English overcoat and bowler when the thermometer was twenty-five below zero; and I knew of his courage from the fracas he had with the New York police when they were breaking the queue at the Centenary Ball for people who gave them money to get in out of their place, in which he came within an ace of being clubbed.
Landor is always witty. I heard him say to a man who was bragging to him about the size of everything in his country, “You see, I am so small that I have to come into a room twice before any one can see me.”
He is also extremely courageous. I once heard a dispute between him and a man of six feet two, whose portrait he was painting. While he was painting it, he did a small commission for this man’s partner, who wanted it in a great hurry as a wedding-present.
“If you work for other people, I won’t have the portrait,” said the giant.
“You must have it,” said Landor.