David Herlihy

by The Lost Cyclist: The Epic Tale of an American Adventurer;His Mysterious Disappearance

  Meanwhile, to get through the flooded countryside, Lenz reluctantly took a cargo boat to the next riverbank city to the west, Katha. He had hoped to resume cycling at that point, but he soon discovered that the roads were flooded there as well. Rather than continue by vessel down the Irrawaddy to Mandalay, or travel there by elephant, Lenz decided to forward his bicycle to that city by boat while he himself proceeded on foot along the partially completed railroad.

  As he trudged along the railroad bed, Lenz observed hundreds of Madras Indians hard at work building the line, seemingly as oblivious to the scorching sun as they were to the pounding rain. He passed through numerous villages, finding lodging at telegraph stations and government-built bungalows. On occasion, he strayed from the railroad, only to find his way blocked by yet another stream. At Wuntho, the train to Mandalay was operational, but Lenz refused to take it. He nevertheless regretted not having his bicycle, so he telegraphed the flotilla company to have it sent by rail as far as Tantabin, a town halfway to his destination. A few days later, when he reclaimed his wheel, he promptly reeled off thirty-five miles, blissfully ignoring the light rain.

  Finally, in late July, Lenz rode into Mandalay, where he found lodging at the home of Captain John E. Harvey. The wheelman took a liking to the large, ethnically diverse city where the cheerful residents strolled about wrapped in colorful silk cloths. No less conspicuous were the legions of Buddhist priests, with shaved heads, dressed in "dull yellow" robes. Soldiers, too, were everywhere, some two thousand in all, three-quarters being of Indian or Burmese extraction.

  Within a week, Lenz came down with malarial fever. He moved to the home of Thomas P. Purdie, a young Scotsman who managed the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company. In mid-August, as the rainy season raged in full force, the cyclist was still bedridden. By the time he resumed his trip, he realized that the roads to India were hopelessly flooded. He decided to head to Rangoon instead, 430 miles south. He dashed off a letter to the Burma Bicycle Club, informing them that he would be visiting the capital city after all, and he expressed his hope to meet with the members in about two or three weeks. Meanwhile, he wrote another letter to Charlie, noting that "the heat is terrible here, and the greatest care is necessary to escape sunstroke."

  On August 22, Lenz left Mandalay, after nearly a month-long stay. Once again he chose to follow the railroad tracks, on foot or wheel but never by train. Along the way, he passed by lush banana groves and rice paddies. To avoid the scorching midday sun, he rested for two hours at train stations. Owing to a threadbare rear tire, Lenz suffered a flat for the first time in eight months. He replaced the inner tube and taped the tire, knowing that he only had to get as far as Rangoon. From there, he would sail to Calcutta, where his trunk awaited with spare parts, including a frame. At that point, he would completely overhaul his battered bicycle.

  Lenz rode into Lower Burma, under steady rain, as the natives looked on incredulously. "The little Burmese boys immediately took a fancy to the wheel," Lenz reported, "and with giggling laughs they raced after me." About forty miles north of Rangoon, Lenz came upon hundreds of beasts being driven along the road. "The cows and oxen were easily scared off," Lenz observed, "but the buffalo were quite fierce looking, and only by bearing slowly down on them would they stampede out of the way."

  Nearing the city, Lenz came across two Europeans who were hunting in the nearby woods. They insisted that he join them for a lunch featuring fresh quail and snipe. Farther on, in the midst of a shower, Lenz ran into six cyclists from the Burma Bicycle Club who had gone out to intercept him. This was the first time abroad that he had run into fellow cyclists, and he was overjoyed to see them. They led him to the British India Hotel in central Rangoon, where he put up for a restful night.

  Over the next two days, the club treated Lenz royally. "They took me in charge," he wrote to his friends. "Their clubhouse was thrown open to me, and all my wants were anticipated." They showed him the city's landmarks, including the six-hundred-year-old Shway Dagon, Burma's largest and grandest pagoda. On his final night, the club held a banquet in his honor and insisted on paying his hotel bills. For Lenz, it was further proof that better days had begun.

  On September 11, just before he boarded his ship to Calcutta, Lenz sent "Charley and friends" a cheerful progress report:

  I have now wheeled and traveled almost 10,000 miles. Burma is a mass of water; nowhere is there passable country to India by the west coast. I had to travel 694 miles to get roundabout to India. I now ship to Calcutta, north from here, [where I will] repair broken parts of old "Vic," then really cycle in earnest again. I am happy, well, and in the best of spirits, the hardest part of the globe being now accomplished. What news? What tidings do the papers give of me? I never hear from America; it's all Asiatic and English news here. Regards to all the friends. We meet in '94. Yours Truly, F. G. Lenz.

  As Lenz steamed into the vast and bustling harbor of Calcutta, he spotted a trio of monuments attesting to the decades-old British rule: the Government House, the Mint, and the Customs House. Indeed, this diverse metropolis of some 700,000 was the second-greatest city of the British Empire, after London itself. Strategically located midway between Europe and the Far East, at the mouth of two great rivers, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, it was the "largest emporium in all Asia." In fact, Calcutta itself had become a major manufacturing center.

  After reclaiming his trunk from an English resident who had acquired it, Lenz revamped his worn-out vehicle. "I had taken the precaution to ship ahead a new frame and bicycle parts," Lenz explained. "These enabled me to build up an almost new mount." In fact, the shiny nickel-plated frame was nearly identical to the original one, and just as obsolete. It was a far cry from the latest light-weight bicycles flooding the American market.

  Lenz planned to stay in Calcutta for several weeks, waiting out the last of the monsoon season. In the meantime, he got to know the city well. He admired its thriving university, European-style buildings, and macadamized roads. He found expansive parks and gardens filled with monuments and an enormous zoo packed with a vast variety of indigenous creatures, including lions, tigers, leopards, hyenas, jackals, monkeys, and apes of all species. He gawked at the deadly cobra, boa constrictor, and python. He judged the collection of snakes, alligators, and lizards "the best the world over."

  Still, Lenz was not entirely enthralled with the teeming city. He was repulsed by its dirty and overcrowded conditions and found many of the cultural conventions curious, if not abhorrent. Cows, sacred to the Hindu majority, were allowed to roam the streets freely, a sore point with the many Muslim residents who, for their part, were inclined to spare pigs. Lenz wondered how the Hindus could stand bathing in the filthy Hooghly every morning, however holy its water.

  Especially disturbing to Lenz was the rigid Hindu system of castes, or hereditary social classes that "do not associate with one another, as if each were of a different race." Individuals, the cyclist noted, are grouped into five castes and identified by the "blots of different colored paint on their arms, bodies and faces." Elaborated Lenz: "The Brahmins are the first or highest caste. The second are descendants of the royal and military families. The third are merchants and cultivators, while the fourth consists of laborers and artificers." On the lowest rung were the "banished" ones "who have violated the principles of the other four."

  Lenz marveled at how the raj managed to preside peacefully over nearly three hundred million mostly illiterate Indians, the world's largest population after China, and five times that of the United States, living in half the space. In his view, British rule had brought about great social and technological progress, while somehow holding together numerous "antagonistic elements, divided by seemingly impassible barriers of religion, languages, and creed." He chided India's relatively small but vocal "educated class," who, far from showing gratitude to their British rulers, saw themselves as "downtrodden and even persecuted."

  Indeed, Lenz empathized strongly with the colonialists, with whom he constantl
y socialized. Contrary to the popular image, he asserted, they did not lead lives of decadence or endless leisure. On the contrary, they often had to sacrifice the comforts of home, while putting up with intense heat, not to mention the resentment and even hostility of the people. Observed Lenz: "I, for one, should not care to spend much of my life in India, no matter how comfortable things may seem."

  Once again, the local colonial cyclists—two hundred strong and growing—showered Lenz with hospitality, holding a banquet in his honor. On the morning of October 8, a large contingent escorted him to the ancient Grand Trunk Road, where he was to begin a 1,300-mile trek across northern India. Upon reaching the endpoint at Lahore, Lenz planned to continue west into Afghanistan. If that route proved impractical, he would descend the Indus Valley to the coastal city of Kurrachee (now Karachi, Pakistan).

  Leaving Calcutta along a smooth road shaded by palm trees, Lenz enjoyed excellent cycling for the first time in over a year. Apart from an occasional shower, the only hindrance was heavy traffic, the road being "dotted with white cows and oxen drawing the native carts." Lenz even met his first camel. The locals, though friendly, "proved exasperatingly awkward in their efforts to get out of the way." Still, Lenz sailed along in high spirits, past half-naked children, many of whom showed off their schooling as they yelled out a crisp "Good morning, sahib!"

  He averaged about fifty miles a day before retiring to basic but comfortable government bungalows. Ten days out of Calcutta, he reached the first major inland city, Benares (now Varnasi). With the help of a Hindu guide, Lenz toured its palaces and temples. He took in its spectacular waterfront along the Ganges, where pilgrims from all across India congregated.

  In nearby Allahabab, Lenz met William Dick, the editor of the English-language newspaper The Pioneer. At a city park, the two men watched the conclusion to the Hindu festival of Dussehra, whose nine days were dedicated to the nine forms of the Mother Goddess, or Shakti. From all parts of the city, colorfully dressed men and women rode in on cows and other sacred animals.

  Reaching the beautiful city of Cawnpore (now Kanpur), Lenz toured the site of the bloody Indian Mutiny of 1857, comprising a well, a memorial church, and the famous marble "mournful seraph" commemorating the heavy loss of British life. There the notorious rebel Nana Sahib had ordered the slaughter of some 120 captives, including women and children. "He succeeded in escaping into Nepal, in the Himalayas," Lenz noted, "where nothing has been heard from him since, whether dead or alive."

  In Agra, Lenz toured the majestic Taj Mahal and its lush gardens, built some 250 years earlier by Shah Jahan as a lavish tribute to his wife. It had taken seventeen years, hundreds of workers, and untold riches to complete. Lenz was so bewitched by its beauty that he paid a second visit by nightfall. "The silvery moonbeams fell softly on the white marble cheeks of this fairest of India's monuments," he waxed. "I stood for a moment in silent wonder. It seemed like a dream or a glimpse into fairyland."

  In early November, Lenz reached Delhi, once the capital city of the vanquished Mogul Empire. He lingered there for four days, scouring the ruins of old battlegrounds. Pushing along the Grand Trunk, Lenz toured many more cities of historic interest. Finally, a month after leaving Calcutta, he reached Lahore, the capital of Punjab. He visited the old fort, mosques, the city wall, and the ancient armory, pausing on occasion to admire the acts put on by snake charmers and street magicians.

  With cold weather fast approaching, Lenz decided he would by-pass Afghanistan. Instead, he headed down the Indus Valley toward the Arabian Sea. "The entire distance was uninteresting, and almost all a barren desert," Lenz reported. The roads were rough and sandy, the government bungalows few, and the food poor. Only along the railway did he find "good filtered water and, occasionally, good food." At the close of November, Lenz happily reentered civilization at Kurrachee, a cosmopolitan city of some 120,000. Recognizing the strategic importance of its port, which shipped tons of wheat and cotton to Europe, the raj had invested heavily to modernize the city.

  In mid-December, Lenz, heading west along the coast, crossed into Balochistan. He soon found himself mired in the Makran Desert without food, water, or shelter. Fortunately, a camel caravan came to his rescue. He wisely retained a camel and driver to help him traverse the remaining four hundred miles of desert, though the service cost him a whopping $1.25 a day. New Year's Day 1894 found the cyclist in Gwadur, and a few days later he crossed into Persia, a large, sparsely settled country of five million. Braving strong winds, Lenz reached Jask in mid-January. At last he was out of the desert, where he had spent sixteen out of twenty-eight nights sleeping in the open air.

  By the onset of February, Lenz had reached Bander Abbas, in the middle of the Strait of Hormoz, the gateway to the Persian Gulf. But he was wilting under the oppressive heat. So as not to fall further behind schedule, he grudgingly took a ship to Bushire, a dirty little port where a small British enclave looked after imperial interests. Like the rusting gunboat in its harbor, the pride of the shah's navy, Bushire struck Lenz as little more than a hollow shell. There he planned the balance of his Asian sojourn. Opting to bypass Baghdad and Palestine, he decided instead to head north twelve hundred miles through Persia, then west along the ancient caravan road to Constantinople, where he had forwarded his trunk.

  From Bushire to Tabriz, Lenz planned to follow the telegraph poles of the Indo-European Telegraph Company, founded in 1868 and financed largely by the Siemens family of Germany. For over twenty years, its advanced network of land lines and underwater cables had allowed London and Calcutta to exchange messages in under an hour. Lenz planned to sleep as often as possible at the stations, spaced from fifty to eighty miles apart. He knew he could count on the hospitality of resident inspectors and clerks, most of whom were Europeans.

  On February 13, Lenz set forth for the interior. He quickly encountered extreme heat, dust, and swarms of flies and mosquitoes. The roads were sandy, and the going slow. Lenz again observed filthy living conditions, but at least the people were friendly. He was pleasantly surprised by their relatively high standard of living, which included ample food produced from the country's "prolific soil." For breakfast, he typically enjoyed boiled milk, eggs, and thin bread; for lunch the fare was tea, raisins, and nuts, and for supper chicken and rice. To quench his thirst, he consumed "sherberts and fruit." The innkeepers, who prided themselves on their cooking, took up to three hours to prepare supper. Lenz often fell asleep in his chair while awaiting his meal.

  Setting off to Shiraz, Lenz entered a steep mountain range. Gamely flinging his bicycle over his shoulder, he followed a series of narrow mule paths, praying all the while that no such creatures would appear. Midway through a second range, Lenz stopped at a telegraph station. That evening he and his host, an English operator, sat at a table listening to the "Indian and Australian news ticking through to London." During lulls, the operator would indulge in "chatting and gossiping" with his far-flung peers. Lenz spent a peaceful night in his cot, only to awaken at six in the morning to a terrifying and seemingly interminable rumbling. "We have earthquakes every day," the clerk placidly explained over breakfast. "One gets used to them."

  Lenz pedaled past fields of tobacco and maize on his way to Kazerun, a small city filled with white stone buildings and small clusters of date palms and orange trees. On its outskirts, he came across the campsite of a nomadic tribe. "I wheeled straight into the midst of their goats' hair tents pitched under the cliff," Lenz re-counted. "The children ran with fright, and the women, who were unveiled, stopped their work in wonder. In answer to my request for a drink they brought some very acceptable milk. The honey I tasted was excellent."

  Approaching Shiraz from a vast plain, Lenz enjoyed a vista of "cypress spires, scattered gardens, and cupolas." Finding lodging once again with a telegraph operator, he toured this "Paris of Persia" celebrated as much for its native poets as for its beautiful gardens, lively bazaars, and ancient monuments. Indeed, much of the city lay in ruins, in part a testa
ment to the frequent earthquakes. He found the climate "delicious but dangerous," noting the prevalence of the deadly "Shiraz fever."

  Lenz soon reached Ispahan (now Esfahan), a thriving capital in antiquity largely reduced to rubble, though it still boasted its famous minarets. Farther on, he stayed at the home of a hospitable Persian who spoke English. "He suggested that we drink to the success of the remainder of my journey," Lenz recalled. "But I expressed doubt that wine could be had in a country where the precepts of the Koran are so strictly opposed to its use. He smiled at this indirect reflection on himself, and said he thought he knew where he could get some. In half an hour he returned with a couple of bottles of so-called Shiraz wine under his coat."

  Passing long caravans of mules, Lenz entered Koom, a walled city with "picturesque white houses" featuring "colored domes, gayly-striped awnings and carved wooden balconies." Less appealing were the local scorpions, known for their unusual "size and venom." This was the second-holiest city in Persia, after Meshed, and one of the country's "favorite burial grounds." Explained the cyclist: "All Persians like their bones to lie near those of some saintly personage, in hope of gaining easy admittance into Paradise under the influence of his sanctity." The cyclist himself, however, felt uncomfortable there, noting: "The mere presence of 'infidels' in this holy place is viewed with disapprobation."

  Heading north toward Teheran, Lenz passed through "sunlit fields of wheat and barley interspersed with bars of red and white poppies." Before long, the scenery turned dreary and the land "utterly devoid of vegetation." His mood sank even lower when, crossing the desert by moonlight, he ran into a caravan of mules, "each laden with two or three black boxes balanced like panniers across its back." Recalled Lenz: "Suddenly it dawned upon me that I was riding in the midst of a moving cemetery, for these boxes—pah! Another sense besides that of sight informed me—were all coffins. A sickness came over me that made me reel in my saddle."