From San Francisco the traveller bent on seeing the world can proceed to New Zealand and Australia, calling at Honolulu in the Hawaïan Islands, and Fiji, on the way; or he can make his way to China, calling at Japan, in steamships having perhaps the most roomy accommodation in the world; or he can reach Panama and South American ports, calling at Mexican ports en route, by steamships which pass over the most pacific part of the Pacific Ocean; or, again, he can make delightful trips northwards to Californian and Oregonian and British Columbian ports; or, once again, southwards to ports of Southern California. These lines are running constantly, and the above list is far from complete. Whither away?
CHAPTER III.
The Pacific Ferry—San Francisco to Japan and China.
The American Steamships—A Celestial Company—Leading Cargoes—Corpses and Coffins—Monotony of the Voyage—Emotions Caused by the Sea—Amusements on Board “Chalked”—Cricket at Sea—Balls Overboard—A Six Days’ Walking Match—Theatricals—Waxworks—The Officers on Board—Engineer’s Life—The Chief Waiter—“Inspection”—Meeting the America—Excitement—Her Subsequent Fate—A Cyclone—At Yokohama—Fairy Land—The Bazaars—Japanese Houses—A Dinner Menu—Music and Dancing—Hongkong, the Gibraltar of China—Charming Victoria—Busy Shanghai—English Enterprise.
A very ordinary trip now-a-days for those rounding the world is that from San Francisco to China, calling at Japan on the way. The steamships of the Pacific Mail Company are those principally employed, and a voyage on such a vessel as the China, which is one of the crack vessels of the service, is one almost invariably of pleasure. The China is a steamship of over 4,000 tons, and cost 800,000 dollars, or, roughly, £160,000 sterling. She will often carry 2,000 tons of tea on a return voyage, to say nothing of perhaps from five to fifteen hundred Chinamen. A traveller[14] already referred to states, that with only 580 on board half a ton of rice had to be served out daily, with a modicum of meat and vegetables. One of the leading cargoes on the outward trip from San Francisco is corpses and coffins, few Chinamen being ever buried out of their native land. In the splendid and roomy saloons of these steamers there are always Chinese waiters, who are said to be most obliging, and noiseless in their motions. Negro waiters are civil and assiduous enough in their attendance, but are always fussy; in this respect “John” is a great improvement on “Sambo.”
“An additional proof,” said a leading journal “of the new vitality infused into that long inert mass, the Chinese Empire, has just been supplied from San Francisco,” and the writer goes on to describe a new development of their mercantile enterprise. It seems that there has been in existence for some time past an association termed the Chinese Merchants’ Steamship Company, the stockholders of which are wealthy [pg 32]native merchants and mandarins, who own many coasting steamers. The company is now about to start a line from China to the Sandwich Islands and San Francisco, and it is not improbable that the Chinese emigrants may prefer these steamers to any other. The manager of this Celestial “P. and O.” is one Tong Ken Sing, a shrewd native of Singapore; and, continues the writer, “under the enlightened control of this man of his epoch, who is equally at home with tails and taels, the company is sure to succeed.”
After leaving the “Golden Gate,” the entrance to the Bay of San Francisco, and passing the rocky Farralones, islands whence a company brings a million of sea-birds’ eggs to the city yearly, the voyager by this route will not see land till Japan is reached. The steamships stop nowhere en route. The passengers must depend on their own resources aboard for amusement, and every passing sail becomes an object of greatest interest. Yet still there is always the sea itself, in its varying aspects of placid or turbulent grandeur. “The appearance of the open sea,” says Frédol, “far from the shore—the boundless ocean—is to the man who loves to create a world of his own, in which he can freely exercise his thoughts, filled with sublime ideas of the Infinite. His searching eye rests upon the far-distant horizon; he sees there the ocean and the heavens meeting in a vapoury outline, where the stars ascend and descend, appear and disappear in their turn. Presently this everlasting change in nature awakens in him a vague feeling of that sadness ‘which,’ says Humboldt, ‘lies at the root of all our heartfelt joys.’ ” When the Breton fisherman or mariner puts to sea, his touching prayer is, “Keep me, my God! my boat is so small, and Thy ocean so wide!” “We find in the sea,” says Lacepède, “unity and diversity, which constitute its beauty; grandeur and simplicity, which give it sublimity; puissance and immensity, which command our wonder.” That immense expanse of water is no mere liquid desert; it teems with life, however little that life may be visible. The inhabitants of the water through which the good ship ploughs her way are as numerous as those of the solid earth; although, unless the great sea-serpent makes its fitful appearance, the experience of a traveller over the Pacific by this route will be repeated. Says he:—
“Few signs of life are visible outside the vessel. Occasionally a whale is reported in sight, but for many days most of the passengers are inclined to think it is only something very ‘like one,’ till, as the days pass, every person has caught a glimpse of a spout of water suddenly shooting up from the sea without any apparent reason, or of a black line cutting through the blue surface for a moment, and then disappearing to unknown depths. Occasionally, too, one or more sea-birds are seen following in the vessel’s wake, sweeping gracefully across and again across the white band of foam, and with difficulty keeping down their natural pace to that of the steam-driven monster. These birds are of two kinds only: the ‘Mother Carey’s Chicken,’ and another, called by the sailors the ‘Cape Hen’—a brown bird, rather larger and longer in the wing than a sea-gull. Both birds are visible when we are in mid-ocean, 1,000 miles at least from the nearest dry land.” The writer of these pages has seen whales, in the North Pacific, keep up with the vessel on which he was a passenger for half an hour or more together. On one occasion a large whale was swimming abreast of the steamer so closely that rifle and pistol shots were fired at it, some undoubtedly hitting their mark, yet the great [pg 33]mammal did not show the slightest symptoms of even temporary annoyance, and there is reason to believe was not much more hurt by the shots than would the targets at Wimbledon be affected by a shower of peas.
Occasionally a little diversity and profit are got out of passengers by the sailors when they go for the first time on the fo’castle. The latter draw on the deck a chalk line quickly round the former, and each visitor so “chalked,” as it is called, must pay a fine in the shape of a bottle of rum. This secures one, however, the freedom of the ship ever after.