It is not the purpose of the present chapter to suggest a course of reading, in the strict sense of the phrase, for it cannot be assumed that everyone who would like to read about lawn-tennis would also like to read about tarpon-fishing. But a general account of the Britannica articles that afford information about recreation and vacations will give the reader a choice among subjects in which he is already interested and among others which may offer him new possibilities.
MOTORING
In connection with motoring, the possessor of the Britannica will not be surprised to find in it, as might be expected from its universal comprehensiveness, much fuller technical information in regard to the structure and operation of his engine, the fuel he employs, and the friction and other resistances he must overcome, than in any of the ordinary manuals on the subject. But it may not occur to him that in planning either a long or a short tour, he can find in the volumes information of other kinds that will give added interest and significance to everything he sees. It is not only when he crosses the Atlantic for his motoring trip that cities and villages and mountains and rivers have stories to tell. In our own country, place-names which may at first suggest nothing, are found, on reference to the Britannica, to be associated with episodes of early exploration, of Indian hostilities, of local agitation, of one or another war, with the lives of famous men, the growth of industries and of commerce, the first success in a new branch of farming, the early days of railroad and canal construction, or the development of transportation by river, lake or sea. And what is being done to-day, in these places, is often quite as interesting, and quite as difficult to ascertain from any source other than the Britannica. This use of the work as a guide-book, or rather as doing a great deal that guide-books lamentably fail to do, is discussed later in this chapter in connection with travel in general as a form of recreation; but motoring gives especial opportunities for observation enriched by knowledge.
The value of the Britannica in connection with the planning of a motoring trip may be illustrated by brief notes on some of the articles you might read if you were about to make, for example, the run from New York through the Berkshire Hills and on to the White Mountains. The following information is all from the Britannica, and from articles to which you would naturally turn in this connection.
A Specimen Tour from New York to the White Mountains
Along the Hudson
Leaving New York by Broadway, your first point is Yonkers (Vol. 28, p. 922), where, as the Britannica tells you, stands “one of the best examples of colonial architecture in America,” Philipse Manor Hall, now a museum of Revolutionary relics. Frederick Philipse, owner in 1779 of the Hall and of an estate extending for some distance along the bank of the Hudson, was suspected of Toryism, and all his property was confiscated by act of legislature. A mile and a half beyond Yonkers you get a magnificent view of the Hudson, disclosing the Palisades, of lava rock (Vol. 13, p. 852) which, in cooling, formed joints like those of the Giant’s Causeway in Ireland. The impressive breadth of the Hudson and its navigability throughout the 151 miles to Troy, notwithstanding that in all that distance it falls only five feet (a good many New Yorkers would be amazed to be told that fact), is due to the low grade of the river bed, permitting the tide to enter and to back up the water, so that this long stretch of the river is really a fjord, not a stream. The article Fjord (Vol. 10, p. 452) tells you how such a rock basin or trough is formed by geological action. The article Henry Hudson (Vol. 13, p. 849) tells you how the great navigator, himself an Englishman, although employed by the Dutch East India Company in 1608 to find a westward route to China, sailed the little “Half Moon” as far up the river as Albany before he was convinced that the Pacific did not lie ahead of him.
The next point after Yonkers, Dobbs Ferry (Vol. 8, p. 349), was a strategic centre of great importance during the Revolutionary War. “The American Army under Washington encamped near Dobbs Ferry on the 4th of July, 1781, and started thence for Yorktown in the following month,” and it was there that Washington and Governor Clinton, in 1783, “met General Sir Guy Carleton to negotiate for the evacuation by the British troops of the posts they still held in the United States.”
Sleepy Hollow
In Tarrytown, as the article under that title (Vol. 26, p. 433) recounts, Washington Irving, who made the legends of the Hudson immortal, built his home at “Sunnyside,” and was buried in the old Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. The article Irving (Vol. 14, p. 856), by the late Dr. Richard Garnett, the famous literary critic, tells you all about Irving’s life; and Professor Woodberry of Columbia, in his article on American Literature (Vol. 1, p. 831), reminds you that, although Irving spent 21 of his adult years in Europe, he is the one American writer who has “linked his memory locally with his country so that it hangs over the landscape and blends with it forever.” “Kaakoot,” one of the large estates at Tarrytown, recalls the extraordinary career of its owner, described in the article John D. Rockefeller (Vol. 23, p. 433); and “Lyndhurst,” that of Jay Gould, of whom and of whose daughter, the well-known philanthropist, the Britannica tells in the article Gould (Vol. 12, p. 284). On the post road near Tarrytown is the bronze statue of a Continental soldier, erected to commemorate the capture of Major André, whose life is told in the article André (Vol. 1, p. 968).