This is a curious read - written in 1911, set in the distant technological future - the year 2660 - any number of his "predictions" have already come to pass.
Others, well, not so much...
In any event - an appallingly written story - the "storyline" or "plot" really just a hinge for the technical utopia the author cares to describe. So - painful - almost cringe to read, but - sometimes that's a joy as well...
Link: The Wikipedia on Ralph 124C 41 +
Link: The full novel, online
When it neared noon Ralph escorted his companion to a luxurious eating place, which across its entrance bore the name Scienticafe. “This is one of our best restaurants, and I think you will prefer it to the oldfashioned masticating places,” he told her. As they entered, a deliciously perfumed, yet invigorating fragrance greeted them. They proceeded at once to the Appetizer, which was a large room, hermetically closed, in which sat several hundred people, reading or talking. The two sat down on leather-upholstered chairs and looked at a humorous daily magazine which was projected upon a white wall, the pages of the magazine changing from time to time. They had been in the room but a few minutes when Alice exclaimed: “I am ravenously hungry and I was not hungry at all 53 when we entered. What kind of a trick is it?” “This is the Appetizer,” Ralph exclaimed laughing, “the air in here is invigorating, being charged with several harmless gases for the purpose of giving you an appetite before you eat—hence its name!” Both then proceeded to the main eating salon, which was beautifully decorated in white and gold. There were no attendants and no waiters, and the salon was very quiet except for a muffled, far-off murmuring music. They sat down at a table on which were mounted complicated silver boards with odd buttons and pushes and slides. There was such a board for each patron. From the top of the board a flexible tube hung down to which one fastened a silver mouthpiece, that one took out of a disinfecting solution, attached to the board. The bill of fare was engraved in the board and there was a pointer which one moved up and down the various food items and stopped in front of the one selected. The silver mouth-piece was then placed in the mouth and one pressed upon a red button. The liquid food which one selected would then begin to flow into the mouth, its rate of speed controlled by the red button. If spices, salt or pepper were wanted, there was a button for each one which merely had to be pressed till the food was as palatable as wanted. Another button controlled the temperature of the food. Meats, vegetables, and other eatables, were all liquefied and were prepared with utmost skill to make them palatable. When changing from one food to another the flexible tube, including the mouthpiece, were rinsed out with hot water, but the water did not flow out of the mouth-piece. The opening of the latter closed automatically during the rinsing and opened as soon as the process was terminated. While eating they reclined in the comfortably upholstered leather armchair. They did not have to use knife and fork, as was the custom in former centuries. Eating had become a pleasure “Do you know,” said Ralph, “it took people a long time to accept the scientific restaurants? At first they did not succeed. Humanity had been masticating for thousands of years and it was hard to overcome the inherited habit. “
Eating had become a pleasure! Anyways, there's no accounting for taste, pardon the pun...
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Found this at the library, and so while soliciting inspiration took the time to give it a read.
As the title suggests, it's premised on the idea that the most interesting thing about travel is the people that you meet, and with this in mind Scott & Gina interviewed fellow travelers for their most interesting tales.
A couple of the best - "Honey of Man", "UFO's" & one about a fellow traveler that had eaten a "Cobra Bird" - apparently a species of Hawk that eats cobras and so has developed an immunity to their venom - and by eating the hawk one experiences some psychedelic effects.
I tried looking this up to verify - to no avail. I'll check it again at the library today.
Unfortunately too many of the stories are from Scott and Gina themselves, and it reads a bit like an "influencers journal", adventure travel done solely with the point of regaling their friends and relatives with their adventures. But - if you see a copy in the library, pull it down and look up "Honey of Man", perhaps 3 pages, but curious...
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Finished the book, some more gems:
Gold Rushes of Other Days:
George W. Custer, Auditor of the Board of Education, Chicago, another '49er, who went overland in 1850, remembered the hardships well enough to shudder as he talked of them. He said :
"It was the fourth day of April, 1850, that my father made up his mind to go to the California gold fields, and started with his family across the country to where we were told men could dig up nuggets with their heels right out of the soft surface mold all over the peninsula of California. I shall never forget our experiences on that trip. Hundreds of people started out without sufficient money or provisions, and as a result they perished of hunger and thirst on the great American desert of the Salt Lake district, through which their path lay.
Our family formed a portion of the caravan known as the Patterson Rangers. It was composed of twelve wagons, forty- seven men and a boy (myself). We ate dinner on the Fourth of July, 1850, right in the heart of the desert, and on that evening we practically ran out of provisions. It was the poorest Fourth of July dinner I ever remember to have eaten. I remember it well. We each had a small piece of smoked meat and a biscuit. My father, who had smuggled a small jar of sweet jelly with him, smeared a little of it over my dry biscuit in honor of the occasion.
Our trail was littered with the remains of other caravans of pioneers who had preceded us across the deadly waste. The skeletons of men and animals dotted both sides of the trail, and wagon wheels, old arms, rusty swords, broken rifles and other relics of the victims of that terrible summer were lying around in profusion. The value of the material that lay there decaying on the desert would, I believe, if fairly computed, run up into the hundreds of thousands of dollars."
And this from "Side-Lights & Other Attractions"
Clairvoyants on Deck.
Clairvoyants put in their bid to be recognized as factors in the Klondike development. Something in the nature of a grub-stake company was formed by a number of spiritualists in Chicago and an advance agent or prospector sent out to locate the rich claims which a well-known " medium" professed to be able to discern clairvoyantly across the vast intervening distance. Some of these claims were said by the " spirit guides" to be fabulously rich and all of them well worth the finding. Maps were drawn and explicit directions given and a new field for "prospecting" duly opened.
A Description of the Theatrical Fare:
Barkeeper Charley.
"The title had local significance, as Douglass Island is just across the channel from the town. It was a very successful play. The hero was a barkeeper named Charley, and the heroine, to use the hero's own words, was a ' perfect lady/ who had a desire to see something of the town with a fancy, rather unusual in a person of that description, for incidentally 'hitting the pipe.'
There was a bootblack, a Chinaman, an Irish policeman, a dude and a number of sports and ' ladies ' in the piece. After the requisite amount of adversity and bad luck had been ground out, the hero, with the help of the bootblack, triumphed over the dude, got a 'pull' with the policeman, married the heroine and otherwise attained brilliant success as the proprietor of the ' finest joint in the town,' to quote his own language again."
This sounds like it should have been a movie with Matt Damon...
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- Practical Instructions for Fortune Seekers etc 1897 -
Of course, following my read of Pierre Burton's "Trails of '98" I had to go and pick up one of the many sources.
This - at 525+ pages - a weighty tome filled with information on the Klondike - what to pack, bring, expect, with abundant first-hand accounts.
As the cover states - it was originally written to "advise & inform" treasure hunters.
You can read or peruse it online here: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL4702533W/Alaska_and_the_Klondike_Gold_Fields
I love this. And already - fuck work, I need a proper jeep, metal detector - and be headed Northwards for the brief Yukon summer to discover my own treasures.
So - fortune is calling - although I will need to somehow arrange a fortune to go looking for it - but - I'm getting religious in my mania - "The Lord is My Shepherd...".
Anyways - still a few months to pass raising my fortune before I squander it trying to raise another.
Back to the book:
Noteworthy:
"There was a young woman back in Fresno who had promised to be his wife. Berry came from the hidden world without injury and Miss D. Bush kept her pledge. They were married.
Berry told his bride about the possibilities of Alaska. She was a girl of the mountains. She said she had not married him to be a drawback, but a companion. If he intended or wanted to go back to the Eldorado, she proposed to go with him. She reasoned that he would do better to have her at his side. His pictures of the dangers and hardships had no effect upon her. It was her duty to face as much as he was willing to face. They both decided it was worth the try — success at a bound rather than years of common toil. Berry declared he knew exactly where he could find a fortune. Mrs. Berry convinced him that she would be worth more to him in his venture than any man that ever lived. Furthermore, the trip would be a bridal tour which would certainly be new and far from the beaten tracks of sighing lovers."
There is reference to Montana Bar & Confederate Gulch, just a few hundred short miles south of Alberta, as well as descriptions of any number of other gold rushes - or, as I would call them - "Leads...".
The book is a veritable treasure map that elaborately describes the treasures but inadequately describes the hazards. There is no fair description of the trials and ordeals that await - or - those fair accounts are overlooked by the enthusiastic reader in his hopes of garnering some share of the riches for him/herself.
There is note of Wall Street:
" Tell Henry that we will have to change our politics, because the Klondike will kill Bryan and the silver question and the money power of Wall Street will try to demonetize gold. The gold that will come out of here inside of two or three years will make Wall Street more anxious to demonetize gold than it ever was to demonetize silver."
and this gem:
"Even with the thermometer at eighty or ninety degrees below zero at Dawson City, Circle City or any of the other mining camps, the intense cold is really not noticed. It would seem very strange to a person used to southern weather to hear a native or a person who had lived for a series of years in Alaska, talking about to being a warm day or a mild day, with the thermometer at sixty-five below. Yet, this peculiar characteristic of the weather, extreme dryness with extreme cold, makes this a common saying among the people.
No chapter on the Land of Wonders, as we have called Alaska, would be complete without reference to the mosquitos, which arc one of the greatest nuisances of the country. The Yukon mosquito is a giant among insects and is king of his tribe. It may seem like a yarn, but it is said to be an actual fact that the mosquito actually hunts and kills bears along the Yukon River."
On Women in the Klondike:
"The poet Campbell, years ago wrote the couplet :
'The world was sad ; the garden was a wild : And man, the hermit, sigh'd — till woman smiled'
Some Klondike Campbell sighed, and women all over the United States smiled. At least they were among the first to catch the gold fever and brave the dangers and the hardships of the Alaskan wilds.
What is more, they contracted the craze just as badly as the men, and many of their enterprises and their hobbies were no whit less out-of-the-way and outlandish than those of their brethren. From Maine to California women of enterprise and courage, many of them of education and gentle birth, flocked to the North in the wild rush to secure wealth by a lucky stroke.
Women who had never known hardship in any form, did not hesitate to leave comfortable homes and brave the unknown. From the very outset the officers of the great transportation companies received a numerous mail from the women of the country, making inquiries as to the outfits necessary for them, and the cost of transportation, and what they would likely have to undergo in carrying out their projects to penetrate to the interior of the gold region."
Reading this, often laughing out loud in delight, the boring camp costs, inventories of the wealth of Alaska, the grand plans to develop both Alaska and the Yukon - all of which fell to naught, the rude poetry of the author and various contributors as they enthuse about the region. It is hard to believe that this is but a 125 years ago!
A mere 125 pages left, but I'll be searching for more on this topic.
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