'Charnay,' he said; 'you know Charnay, then? It was he who took me there first. Early 'eighties, I think.' He pulled out another volume and turned to the title-page. 'Here we are, "The Ancient Cities of the New World," '87. My copy is only the translation, published two years after the original appeared.'
This puzzled me rather. If he had been eighteen in 1902, he must have been a mere babe in 1885.
'Rather young, were you not, when you were there?' I ventured.
'Young? Why?' he replied.
'Oh, only because you said that you were eighteen when you ascended Aconcagua in 1902, so I thought that you must have been rather young when you were in Mexico in 1885.'
He stood still and stared at me, a puzzled look on his face.
'Good gracious,' he said, 'didn't Jones tell you? Didn't he explain to you about me and my travels?'
'Oh yes,' I hastened to reassure him, fearful that I had given offence; 'he told me that you were a widely-travelled man; and, if you will permit me to say so, I think he understated——'
'Yes, yes,' he went on, 'but didn't he tell you how I travelled? Didn't he tell you that I had never been out of Europe? This is my world,' he continued, waving his arm round the bookcases; 'here are my Americas, my Africa, my Asia, my Europe, and my Australia. There (pointing to a case by the window) is my West Indies, here (indicating another one) is my Polynesia, there my Arctic and Antarctic. Here (patting the back of the big easy chair) is my steamboat, my mule, and my camel. No weather can delay me, no storm prevent my setting out. Though it snow a blizzard, still can I cross the very summits of the Andes: be there a year-old drought, still may I journey from Sydney to Port Darwin overland.'
I could only marvel at the man. No world-wide traveller could have been prouder or have found greater satisfaction in the contemplation of his travels. And a further conversation assured me that, assisted by a good memory, he knew more, far more, of the countries about which he had read so many books than did ninety-nine out of a hundred of the tourists who had actually visited those lands.
