Travel
[We publish in this column articles and -notes which may help our readers in their plans for travel at home and abroad. They are written by correspondents who have visited the places described.]
Motoring in America
Wiry is it that hundreds, indeed thousands of English motorists habitually take their cars over to the Continent of Europe, but hardly one attempts the much more exciting experience of motoring in America ? Perhaps it is because of the somewhat formidable cost of transporting a car across the Atlantic ; but this is by no means the only way of taking a motor trip in the United States.
Second-hand motor cars of a perfectly satisfactory nature are absurdly cheap in America, and by far the easiest method, if you do not mind using a not very luxurious vehicle, is to buy, a car when you get to the other side. A friend and I recently spent a few days motoring in Northern Virginia. We botight an old, but perfectly reliable, Ford in Connecti- cut, and started off in a southerly direction, without very much idea of where we were going. The second night saw us in Baltimore, the third in Washington, the fourth in Fredericks- burg, the fifth in Charlottesburg, and the sixth staying with some friends on the other side of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Anyone who knows the American map will see that the dis- tances travelled each day are exceedingly small, but this has nothing to do with touring difficulties. It was rather because we spent a great proportion of each day in sightseeing. Baltimore, Washington, Fredericksburg, and Charlottesburg are all so full of intense historical interest that it is impossible to pass them by too rapidly. But the motoring conditions, in these Eastern States at any rate, compare exceedingly favourably with England and France. The scenery is often magnificent (nothing could exceed the grandeur of the run down from Connecticut to Baltimore), while Virginia itself is, in some ways, very like the Southern counties of England, only somewhat larger, and with a touch of exoticism.
We took our journey in January, and the start from Connec- ticut was, as the reader may imagine, exceedingly cold ; but the January climate of Virginia, at any rate, as we found it, was delicious. Bright sun and crisp frosty mornings made ideal surroundings. The main roads are chiefly narrow con- crete ribbons stretched across the countryside. The surface is almost perfect, but there is no more than just room for two cars to pass, and it must be admitted that one sometimes has an uncomfortable feeling that one may put a front wheel off the concrete belt into the untouched earth beside it, with consequences which might be disastrous.
The side roads are usually merely gravel, and have a certain number of potholes ; but they are perfectly passable if one does not attempt high speeds, and take one through delicious wild country. Virginia itself is, of course, packed with historic associations. One inevitably starts out from Washington for Mount Vernon, Washington's old home, and is rewarded by what is surely one of the most charming eighteenth century cottages—it is scarcely more—that exist in the world. Certainly the sight of Mount Vernon standing over the broad sweep of the Potomac is as fine as anything that you will find in a Week's touring in Normandy or by the Loire.
And then the small towns in Virginia, Fredericksburg, Charlottesburg, &c., have a unique eighteenth century flavour. Little or no building took place in them between the fifties or sixties of the last century and about ten years ago, and apparently American architects built in an eighteenth century style right up to the Civil War. The consequence is that these little towns seem to have escaped the whole phase of Victorian horror. Fredericksburg, which is surely the most historic town in America, is a good example. It is at once the birthplace of Washington, the home of Paul Jones, the founder of the American Navy, and the site of one of the most terrible and bloody engagements of the Civil War, the great Southern victory which takes its name from the town.
Then, as one motors down Virginian roads, one is con- tinually arrested by an inscription on some bridge or gateway —that here Lord Delaware bartered land with the Indians in 1610 or some such date, or that there Pocahontas was first encountered. Virginia is as full of historical background as the Western and North-Western States of the Union are devoid of it.
The ideal motor tour in America would be, I am sure, an enlarged version of the trip which we took. That is to say, no preliminary route should be made ; the tramp" should simply wander where his fancy takes him.
The hotels and inns vary in quality, like those of any other country except France ; but nearly all which we encountered were good, although there is apt to be nothing much between a_ first-class hotel with extremely high prices and a very humble type of lodging indeed: There - are vertain....yalid objections to the latter type of lodging, but these objections do not apply, we found, to what may be called the corre- sponding eating-house. Tersely described in their advertise- ments as "Eats," and usually offering one a "chicken dinner," these wayside eating-houses may generally be recom- mended. They have a rough plenty, which to the not too squeamish palate is decidedly pleasant. The service one obtains at garages is said to vary much with the kind of car one is travelling in and one's general appearance. If it is a Rolls Royce or a Lincoln, and if one's general mien is what is popularly known as "high hat," the service, though, doubtless, efficient, is said to be sometimes grudging and always expensive. But if one comes as we did, nothing could be more friendly than the men who supply petrol, &c. We often found that small, though sometimes troublesome, adjustments (such as a shorting lamp) would be repaired for one, and all payment would be refused. However, as every- where else, it would be absurd to generalize from a few experiences.
But certainly there is nothing in American conditions, either in the roads, the garages, the hotels, &c., which should put off the intending motorist, and if anyone is seeking a rather more original field than usual for touring he should very seriously consider some part of the United States.
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