THE PRINCE’S TRAVELS

Hokitika Guardian, 6 August 1931, Page 2

THE PRINCE’S TRAVELS

200,000 MILES

VISITS TO FORTY COUNTRIES

LONDON, June 25

Has the Prince of Wales achieved a world record in travel ? asks a special correspondent in the “Observer,” and replies that a ready affirmative is easy, but it may be unthinking. Maybe there i s somewhere a traveller whoso unrecorded Odysseys beat the Prince’s. There is the case of Mr Leon Estrabrook, an American. To get every country in the world to take, a census of agriculture in 1929-30 lie spent the previous four years visiting every single seat of government on the globe, except those of Afghanistan (which happened to be in no condition to receive him), and one or two places in Central Africa. Yet, after all, this remarkable achievement only strengthens tlie impression that the Prince’s travels must be unique, for be lias not gone from one country to the next, but has crossed oceans and continents many times to reach his various objectives, and when he has reached them he has visited every place of interest.

In Europe the only countries he has not visited are Russia and the Balkan States. Disregarding Europe, the following is the list of his tours since the war: 1920, Australia and New Zealand; 1921-22. India and Japan; 1923, Canada; 1924, United States; 1925, Africa and South America; 1927, Canada; 1928 29, Africa; 1930, Africa;, 1931, South America.

To Canada, wheie the Prince has a ranch, he has made two additional visits, and it. is possible he may go there again next year in connexion with the World Grain Exhibition.

A MILEAGE OE 290,000. A computation of the mileage covered from point to point in these tours, and making no allowance for local travelling, works out at about 200,009, which is equal to eight complete journeys round the earth. One may read of the great fuss Queen Victoria made, aiid of the months of tension she suffered, when her eldest son, afterwards King Edward, was going to Egypt ‘to sit beneath the Pyramids.” One wonders what she would have said of the way the Pi inee had taken advantage of the ample pinion which modern science has lent to travel. For lie undertakes an Empire tour with rather less concern than his great-grandmother felt in going to Balmoral—certainly with less concern than Queen Victoria’s ladies felt 'oil tWSSS occasions. ST“any rate, this may be said of the travelling itself: the planning of course, is a prodigious job.

it is worth while setting out just what countries the Prince has visited, outside Europe, in the last twelve years, Here taey are:--Canada, New Zealand, Australia, India, South Africa, Malta, Gcnd Coast, British East Africa, Kenya, T anganyika, Him desia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Malaya, United States, Argentina, Cnili, Uruguay, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Panama, Gambia, St. Helena, Trinidad, Grenada, St. Lucia, Barbados, Montserrat, British Guinea, Bermudas, Fiji, Samoa, The Philippines, Borneo, Ceylon, Straits Settlements, Aden, Hong Kong.

Some of these count-lies the Prince lias visited more than once. He has reconnoitred at every point of the compass. The kaleidoscope of his travels shows him now riding a bullock or an elephant now soaring into the air, now crossing the Andes from the Atlantic to the Pacific, now climbing rocks to reach an African gold mine, sweltering in the Indian sun or shivering at the southernmost point of New Zealand, receiving Indian princes in pomp and state or making his laborious way through “pillared aisles of sago, palms, mahogany, and, red devil trees.” A HARVEST OF EXPERIENCE. But the Prince has t.eated the world less as a playground than as a mighty harvest-ground of experience. His is the tvpe of intelligence that gains richly and quickly from observation and talk; lie understands, say, the native question in Kenya more truly than any student of Blue Books. Mechanical things he grasps readily also. And yet it might have been otherwise with him. He might have been born with that “natural horror of sights” that made Dickens say he c0..1d not hear to go to the Great Exhibition a second time.

On his latest trip, the one to South America, the Prince appeared more conspicuously than before in the role of unofficial trade ambassador, and, though he would depreciate any attempt to measure the value of his work there ill terms of money, there is no doubt that his personal eclat has done British trade in South America an immense amount of good. He is renewing the tradition of tie Prince Consol’ on a grand scale. Who can gainsay that the two pieces of counsel he is constantly giving as the result of Ids travels, “Adopt, adapt, an improve,” and, “Let the heads o business themselves go and see, are eminently sound? It should he added l that the Sta e does not pay for all these touts, hut only for those which the Government itself suggests. The trip to South

America, for instance, though entirely n . business one, was paid for by the Prince.