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No mere "globe-trotter" need attempt to learn any Kashmiri, as Hindustani is "understanded of the people" as a rule, and the tradesmen in Srinagar know quite as much English as is good for them. The Tourist's Guide to Kashmir, Ladakh, Skardo, &c., edited by Arthur Neve, F.R.G.S.
It goes its way round the world. It has no nation, it costs no weariness, it knows no bonds. The terrestrial scenery the tourist's is a prisoner compared with this. The tourist's scenery moves indeed, but only like Wordsworth's maiden, with earth's diurnal course; it is made as fast as its own graves. And for its changes it depends upon the mobility of the skies.
Gorge and mountain are wild enough, but their frown expires in the teeming softness of the great vale of Umbria. To lie aloft there on the grass, with silver-grey ramparts at one's back and the warm rushing wind in one's ears, and watch the beautiful plain mellow into the tones of twilight, was as exquisite a form of repose as ever fell to a tired tourist's lot.
There is a picture of it all, very bright and detailed in the morning light, in the battle gallery amidst the ruins at old Nancy, and one sees the old-world uniform of the "soldier," the odd caps and belts and boots, the ammunition-belt, the water-bottle, the sort of tourist's pack the men carried, a queer elaborate equipment. The soldiers had awakened one by one, first one and then another.
He gave vivid little pictures of the noises of the bombardment, of the dead lying casually in the open spaces, of the failure of the German guns to hit the bridge of boats across which the bulk of the defenders and refugees escaped. He produced a little tourist's map of the city of Antwerp, and dotted at it with a pencil-case. "The what do you call? obus, ah, shells! fell, so and so and so."
The Frenchman, following the direction of his eyes, saw her also, and regarded her instantly with such evident concern that Gordon, who had recognized her even at that distance as the Countess Zara, felt assured that his inquisitor held, as he had already suspected, more than a tourist's interest in Tangier. "Well, I will wish you a good-morning," said the Frenchman, hurriedly.
In other lands I have visited, I have only dared give a tourist's impressions fortified by some acknowledged authority, or by those who have had the advantage of a long-time residence. My Japanese impressions can only hint at what this wonderful land offers in beauty, in poetic sentiment, and in development of life.
"Oh, my dear fellow, don't you know Vermeer? You're not civilised. You mustn't live a moment longer without making his acquaintance. He's the one old master who painted like a modern." He dragged Hayward out of the Luxembourg and hurried him off to the Louvre. "But aren't there any more pictures here?" asked Hayward, with the tourist's passion for thoroughness. "Nothing of the least consequence.
Let us suppose," he continued, folding his table-napkin into a graceful festoon, "that this represents what is perhaps the necessity of this Age the Active Tourist's Portable Bath. You may describe it briefly, if you like," looking at the Chancellor, "by the letters A.T.P.B."
"Sold!" shouted the painter, in boyish glee. "Hooray! Where's that rascal Bob? Oh, I know! I sent him for the beer. Giotto, my dear fellow, I have some shooting-boots somewhere, if you can find them, and a tourist's knapsack, and"
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