In a pouring rain we arrived at Aspinwall, and this being the terminus, we proceeded at once on board the steamers that were waiting to convey us to New York. There happened to be an unusual number of opposition boats in the bay, so that fares were so reduced that the roughest fellow there could take a first-class berth. This was very unfair to those of us who had booked our places through at the office of the Mail Line in San Francisco, for we had paid a certain price for a certain degree of comfort and room, and this was denied to us so soon as the price of the saloon fare rendered it so overcrowded that the tables had to be laid twelve times each day to accommodate the first-class passengers with first-class fare.
Thus the saloon was continually occupied, and each moment it was, “Sound the gongâ€�—“Hurry up the soup,â€� and down rushed the “next lot,â€� as an auctioneer would say, leaving a hecatomb of Californian hats at the foot of the companion ladder. We had on board the junior partner of some English house, who was returning from a business visit he had made to some part of South America. He gave himself great airs, and being dressed with the extreme taste which characterises your fast city man, he threw us all into the shade, for we as yet were not fashionably attired, nor had we put razors to our chins.
One day at dinner this fellow, being affronted at some negligence on the part of the waiter, said, “Aw! do you take me for a returned Californian?�
This remark being audible above the din of knives and forks produced a sudden silence, and, for a moment I thought that Mr. Bobbins’s ears would have been taken off with a carving knife. Fortunately, for him, however, each one was in high spirits at the thought of reaching home, and being very hungry continued his dinner without waiting to resent the impertinence.
There was a man on board who had brought with him from the mines two young grizzly bear cubs, who were just getting large enough to be dangerous, and that evening, as Mr. Bobbins was dreamily enjoying a cigar on deck, he was aroused from the contemplation of his patent leather boots by moonlight with, “Sir, allow me to introduce to you two returned Californians.� Ursa major, thereupon, being held up, scratched Bobbins’s face, whilst ursa minor attacked the patent leathers, which he forcibly removed, together with a toe-nail or so, with his teeth.
Whilst one miner held a screeching, biting, ring-tailed monkey over Mr. Bobbins’s head, another produced a savage bull-terrier, who, having done his duty at the mines dogfully, seemed very anxious indeed to make the acquaintance of Mr. Bobbins’s throat.
It was some time before the “returned Californians� could tear themselves away from their new acquaintance, and when they did, they tore away more of his cross-barred trousers and cut-away coat than any tailor could repair.
The next day we arrived at Havannah, and Mr. Bobbins was wise enough to leave the ship and await a passage in another vessel, and I only wish that every travelling “gent� who, puffed out with conceit, causes his countrymen to blush for his ignorance and vulgarity, may get as durable a lesson as that which Mr. Bobbins received from the four-footed “returned Californians.�
At Havannah we found that Americans were in bad odour, on account of the fillibustering expeditions which had but lately been repulsed. As we steamed out of the harbour, an intelligent miner observed to me, “I guess that place will soon belong to our people.�