My longest delay was at Singapore, where I lost forty hours. The next longest loss of time was in New York—wonderful to relate—where I was delayed thirty-six hours, although four railways were competing for the honor of taking me across the continent on a record-breaking journey. I arrived on Saturday, and had to charter a special car—which cost $1,500—and could not get away until Monday morning. I was near being delayed a day at Calais, France, but succeeded in chartering a boat to take me over the Channel. As this boat carried the British mails, I was relieved of the expense by the British Government.
At Portland I met with a most annoying delay of five hours, due entirely to mismanagement. This most unexpectedly lengthened out my tour at the very end, and so angered me that I refused to attend a banquet the people had prepared for me. I pushed on to Tacoma as soon as I could get anything to carry me, and arrived there exactly sixty-seven days, thirteen hours, two minutes, and fifty-five seconds from the time I had started. The actual time of traveling was fifty-nine days and seven hours. Seven days and five hours had been lost. This was then the fastest trip around the world. It has been beaten since by myself.
As I had started on my second trip from a Pacific coast point, there was a good deal of rivalry among the growing towns in that section with regard to the honor of being the starting-point of my third trip in '92, in which I eclipsed all previous records. I had already announced that this could readily be done, as the Pacific steamships were very much faster than they had been at the time of my former voyage, and as the connections at various ports were much better. Sir William Van Horne had also written that he wanted me to make another tour of the world, using one of the fast ships of the Canadian Pacific road, the famous Empresses, that soon would be put on the line to Yokohama. The new town of Whatcom, on Puget Sound, in the extreme northwest of Washington, raised the amount necessary for the trip, and I made my start from that point, catching the Empress of India from Vancouver.
An account of this voyage would necessarily be only a panoramic glance at a narrow line around the world. I made Yokohama in eleven days, was at Kobe, Japan, in thirteen, and at Shanghai in fifteen. Here I had some difficulty in finding a fast steamer for Singapore, but succeeded in getting aboard a swift German boat, the Friga, which put me in Singapore in time to catch the Moyune, the last of the fast tea ships, and on her I sailed as far as Port Said, through the Suez Canal. At Port Said I boarded the Ismaila for Brindisi, Italy. Then I again rushed across Europe, and caught the Majestic at Liverpool for New York. I found a distinguished company on board, including Ambassador John Hay, D. O. Mills, Lady Stewart, Mrs. Paran Stevens, and Senator Spooner.
Dinner in the Mills Hotel given by George Francis Train.
I arrived in New York in good time, had a very slight delay in comparison with that of my second voyage, and went flying across the continent to Whatcom. The entire trip, giving a complete circuit of the globe, was made in sixty days.
To these three trips I attach no more importance, I hope, than is fairly their due. In each of them, in succession, I had beaten all previous records of travel; and this was something in the interests of all persons who travel, as showing what could be done under stress, and as a stimulus to greater efforts to reduce the long months and days consumed on voyages from country to country. But they were, as I consider them, merely incidents in a life that has better things to show. One of these voyages, the one in which I "put a girdle round the earth" in eighty days, has the honor of having given the suggestion for one of the most interesting romances in literature. This, at least, is something.
But I give this brief account of my voyages, at the end of my autobiography, chiefly because I regard them as somewhat typical of my life. I have lived fast. I have ever been an advocate of speed. I was born into a slow world, and I wished to oil the wheels and gear, so that the machine would spin faster and, withal, to better purposes. I suggested larger and fleeter ships, to shorten travel on the ocean. I built street-railways, so that the workers of the world might save a few minutes from their days of pitiless toil, and so might have a little leisure for enjoyment and self-improvement. I built great railway lines—the Atlantic and Great Western, and the Union Pacific—that the continent might be traversed by men and commerce more rapidly, and its waste places made to blossom like the rose. I wished to add a stimulus, a spur, a goad—if necessary—that the slow, old world might go on more swiftly, "and fetch the age of gold," with more leisure, more culture, more happiness. And so I put faster ships on the oceans, and faster means of travel on land.