Scotch Holiday

GRAND TOUR--Patrick Balfour--Ear-court, Brace ($3.75).

Patrick Balfour stepped from his train into London one dull, grey morning, stopped to read a sandwichman's sign: "To India by Rolls-Royce car for -L-34." A Scot who could trace his ancestors to Robert the Bruce, Patrick Balfour knew that there must be a catch in it somewhere. Nevertheless two weeks later he was on his way to the Far East, traveling with strangers in two old automobiles.

Purpose of the trip was to demonstrate an invention that used charcoal instead of gasoline for fuel. By the time Dover was reached the charcoal burner, a five-foot stove that steamed and sizzled on the running board, had been abandoned. Colonel Christmas of the Indian Civil Service had organized the trip because he made a point of never returning to India over a route he had traveled before. Now his leave was almost up and delays drove him frantic. Absentminded, he once crawled under his car to work on it, fell sound asleep. He drove with fierce intensity, getting a death grip on the steering wheel, gritting his teeth, while he raced along at 20 m. p. h. Swanky Mrs. Christmas puzzled Traveler Balfour: in a great hurry to get to India, she planned, as soon as she arrived, to catch a boat for London, worried all the way lest she miss it. Among the good companions Traveler Balfour placed Miss Gumbleton, who loved to sew and who darned socks for the whole company, begging for torn garments like a child after sweets. He was a little uneasy about Mrs. Mock, who seemed preoccupied with symptoms of illness, was amused by Mr. Waters, a retired physician who refused to be addressed as Doctor.

The steamer for Haifa sailed from Brindisi and, as one car raced across France toward the port, the other was smashed by a truck in Lyon. The cars became separated, the drivers got lost, then forgot where they had agreed to meet. But the whole party caught the boat at the last moment and the two cars were hoisted aboard.

Traveler Balfour found Oriental night life squalid, Damascus disappointing, with trams and a dump heap of wrecked automobiles bulking large in his impressions. He saw no cedars on Lebanon, was bored by the Syrian desert, slept soundly in the wilderness while his companions complained that the howling of jackals kept them awake. But at Baalbek Traveler Balfour's up-to-date boredom crumbled as he brooded over the temples of the past, felt his heart beat more rapidly as he awakened to the enchantment of the legendary cities of the East.

In Afghanistan another wreck jarred Traveler Balfour, jammed the car doors so tightly they would not open. The Rolls-Royces broke through light Afghan bridges, stuck fast in heavy Afghan sands. Once the motorists robbed a native graveyard of tombstones to prop up a bridge, momentarily expected outraged natives to shoot them down. Driving day & night, India loomed ahead like the Promised Land, a place where they could take a bath. Traveler Balfour found Indian bathtubs uncomfortable, natives inefficient, and his boredom and impatience, dormant for weeks, returned. He had a date in Nepal, where a friend was being decorated; climbing the Himalayas, dropping into a valley, he arrived breathlessly just as the ceremonies began. After India, Traveler Balfour caught a free ride on a British manofwar, visited the Andaman Islands, famed penal colony for rebellious natives, toured Malaya, Siam, Indo-China, until the accumulation of Oriental wonders made his head swim, his boredom disappear, and he ceased to note the inane remarks of traveling companions while he gawked as shamelessly and happily as any tourist.

The Author was born in Edinburgh in 1904, elder son and heir of Lord Kinross. Sharp-faced, thin, slightly bald. Traveler Balfour after Oxford worked as book reviewer and cinema critic on the Glasgow Herald, conducted a society column for the London Sunday Dispatch at the age of 23, a gossip column for the Daily Sketch at the age of 24. An expert amateur photographer. Author Balfour abandoned column-writing in 1931, planned to write seriously, went abroad, crossed the Sahara in 1933 before starting by motor for India and the Far East.

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