The Argosy — page 61: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

50 The Channel Islands. over here in August, in his yacht Skyscraper, and offered me £20 for it and a cruise round the Island, and I replied: ‘No, your worship, it’s not for sale; and I don’t think I would exchange it for the Koh-i- noor of her most Gracious Majesty the Queen.’” H. gave up any further attempt to buy the stalk, and turned to a bundle of ordinary dimensions. Choosing out the two ugliest and thickest to be found, he insisted upon my accepting one in memory of Jersey. With these two disreputable, awful, and Irish-looking im- plements of war added to our impedimenta—now become so in very deed—we were compelled to travel about the Islands, and finally through some parts of Normandy, merely to satisfy the idiosyncrasy of a being afflicted with a cabbage-stalk mania. I have since heard that it attacks everyone who visits the Channel Islands, and is popu- larly known as the “ Jersey Fever.” To return to the cars. The delighted tourist mounts to his seat by means of a ladder. There are four or five rows of benches one behind another, all facing one way—straight ahead. On each side the driver there is room for two passengers, and these seats are so much the best and pleasantest they might well command a premium. The car has also a conductor, who points out whatever is worth seeing on the road, pilots his charges about at the numerous halting places, takes them upon high rocks and down into deep caves, and makes himself generally useful. ‘Thus these cars, like Cook’s Tours, may be said to be “ personally conducted.” Jehu has his four horses well in hand, and turns sharp corners and bowls over straight roads at a speed at once exhilarating and agreeable. This is one way of seeing Jersey. It was the best way, most certainly, in this month of October, when the cars had diminished in number until there was only one left to tell the tale, and the passen- gers were few and quiet. In full season, the time of many cars and tourists, no doubt it is quite another matter. For ourselves, having attempted both ways, we have a right to give an opinion. On the Saturday afternoon we hired a carriage, on the Monday we patronised the car, and from every point of view the latter was the greater success. We went much faster through the air and we saw a great deal more. We had the carriage for three hours, the car for nearly seven. The charge for the one was nine shillings ; the car, for each passenger, exacts the moderate fare of half a crown: and it is as well appointed as a London stage coach. : We started, then, that Saturday afternoon, for Mont Orgeuil Castle, the most important sight of its kind in the island. On our way we passed the Market Place, and I blush to say at the entreaties and even menaces of H. (I remembered the awful cabbage-stalks he had bought that morning) we laid in a further supply of muscats of Alex- andria, to be disposed of in the broad, lonely, open country. Uphill for a time and bearing to the right, we soon found ourselves without the town, on the coast road. MHere runs one of the short Gomicbooks