CHAPTER I.

_"Make ready ... Fire!" The Departure._


The preparations for the start of a traveller on a long journey are
doubtless of every variety in quality and quantity, from the poor Arab,
whose wife carries his house as well as all his goods--or perhaps I
should rather say, from Sir Charles Napier of Scinde with his one
flannel waistcoat and his piece of brown soap--up to the owners of the
Dover waggon-looking "_fourgon_" who carry with them for a week's trip
enough to last a century. My weakness, reader, is, I believe, a very
common one, i.e., a desire to have everything, and yet carry scarce
anything.

The difficulties of this arrangement are very perplexing to your
servant, if you have one, as in my case. First you put out every
conceivable article on the bed or floor, and then with an air of
self-denial you say, "There, that will be enough;" and when you find an
additional portmanteau lugged out, you ask with an air of astonishment
(which may well astonish the servant), "What on earth are you going to
do with that?" "To put your things into it, sir," is the very natural,
reply; so, after a good deal of "Confound it, what a bore," &c., it ends
in everything being again unpacked, a fresh lot thrown aside, and a new
packing commenced; and believe me, reader, the oftener you repeat this
discarding operation, the more pleasantly you will travel. I speak from
experience, having, during my wanderings, lost everything by shipwreck,
and thus been forced to pass through all the stages of quantity, till I
once more burdened myself as unnecessarily as at starting.