Working my Way Around the World

The whistle of the locomotive is now heard in the suburbs of Damascus; for, besides the railway to the coast, a new line brings to the ancient city the produce of the vast and f...

The sun rose clear and red the next morning. It was the best sort of day for continuing my journey. The teachers set out to accompany me to the foot of the Nazarene mountains. T...

The next morning I continued my tramp into sunny Italy. The highway was covered with deep mud, and my garments were still wet when I drew them on. But the day was bright with su...

On the morning of the fifth day out, I was ordered into the hold to send up the trunks of Egyptian travelers. When I climbed on deck after the last chest, the deep blue of the s...

Late that afternoon we met at the Sailors’ Home. It was not long before Marten and I decided that we must rid ourselves of Haywood once for all. Go where we would, he was ever a...

All through that month of February in Cairo I studied the posters of the steamship companies to learn what ships were sailing eastward; for I hoped to get work on one of them as...

The territory beyond Banpáwa was more savage than any we had yet seen. Everywhere the climbing and creeping plant life was so thick and interwoven that our feet could not reach...

One fine morning, some two weeks after my introduction to Tom, I left my post in the consul’s household, and set about making plans for a journey up the Nile. For I knew that if...

At the time we reached Rangoon, that town was filled with sailors who had been looking for a chance to “sign on” for months past, with no success. Moreover, they assured me that...

In all of north Africa there was no place that I wanted to visit more than Cairo. I had heard, too, that I might find work there easily. At any rate, I felt that I must get ther...

The scenery that met my gaze as I moved through the streets of Colombo seemed much like that of some great painting. The golden sunshine, the rich green, the dark bodies moving...

The path to Bangkok, such as it was, lay on the eastern bank of the Menam River. This time we crossed the stream in a dugout canoe fully thirty feet long, which held, besides ou...

The merry circus days had left me so great a fortune that I decided to sail to the peninsula of India at once. Marten, of Tacoma, offered to go with me, and I agreed; for the ex...

It was Saturday, nearly two weeks after my arrival in Yokohama, that I saw a chance to escape from Japan. The American consul had promised to speak for me to the captain of a fa...

The next morning we went to call on an American missionary. He lived in a handsome bungalow set in a wooded park on a hill just outside the town. The first persons we saw when w...

The distance to the free state was not great. When we reached the boundary we came upon a camp of native soldiers. Here we stopped, as was our duty before crossing into Siam. Th...

I returned to Colombo by train, reaching the city in the late afternoon. I made my way at once to Almeida’s. In the roofless dining-room sat Askins and the Swede, highly excited...

It was my good fortune to find employment while in Madras. The job was the easiest I had yet had, and it brought me three rupees a day. All I had to do was to sit in street-cars...

Two hours after my arrival in Calcutta, there was seen making his way through the streets of that city a youth who had been turned away from the Sailors’ Home by a hard-hearted...

However, I found a hotel beside a canal down near the harbor. The proprietor, awakened from a doze, gurgled a welcome. He was an American who had lived for some years in Nagasak...

One afternoon, while in my favorite coffee-house, I heard some one say that a cargo-boat was to leave for a town in Germany on the Rhine, and that passengers could go along for...

For miles the road climbed sharply upward, or crawled along the face of a mountain at the edge of a yawning pit. The villages were far apart, and as they were low and flat, and...

The month of August was drawing to a close when I started southward. At first I had to pass through noisy, dirty villages filled with crying children and many curs. Beyond, trav...

Spread out in the low, flat valley of the Menam, Bangkok was a dull city of rambling rows of cottages. Her poorly paved streets were crossed by many canals, on which low-roofed...

At noon the next day I received my wages and a printed certificate stating that I had been a sailor on the cattle-boat. I kept it, for the police would surely demand to know my...

Three days later I took passage to London, and that same afternoon sailed for Rotterdam. At sunrise the next morning I climbed on deck, and found the ship steaming slowly throug...

After spending some sixteen years in schools and colleges, I decided, one spring, to take a year off and make a trip around the world. I had no money for such a journey; but tha...

I tramped through several villages, and came to the bank of the Upper Loire River. A short distance beyond, the road began winding up the first foot-hills of the Alps. Along the...