No more the sailor’s plaintive song with tears our eyes shall dim,
No more on Sunday morning shall we sing the Evening Hymn;”
the fact being that a clergyman on board had once inadvertently chosen the latter for morning service! The epilogue concluded by wishing good luck to all the officers and men and to the good old ship.
LEAVING THE COAST OF CALIFORNIA.
Baron Hübner has given us, in his published work before quoted, some interesting reminiscences of, and graphic notes on, his voyage to Japan from San Francisco. A few extracts may be permitted.
“July 4.—The sky is pearly grey. The vessel is all painted white: masts, deck-cabins, deck, tarpaulins, benches—all are white. This deck, from poop to prow, is all in one piece, and makes a famous walk. Almost all the morning I am alone there. The first-class passengers get up very late; the second-class—that is, the Chinese—not at all. [pg 36]They go to bed at San Francisco, and never leave their berths till they reach their destination. You never see one of them on deck. The sailors, having done their duty, disappear likewise. And how easy that duty is in such weather! On leaving the Golden Gate the sails were hoisted, and have remained untouched ever since. The breeze is just strong enough to fill them and keep us steady. The result is a complete calm. The smoke ascends up to heaven in a straight line. So the sailors have a fine time of it. They sleep, smoke, or play down-stairs with their companions. The two men at the helm—these two are Americans—are equally invisible, for a watch-tower hides them from sight, as well as the rudder and the officer of the watch. I have thus got the deck of this immense ship entirely to myself. I pace it from one end to the other, four hundred feet backwards and forwards. The only impediment is a transverse bar of iron, as high as one’s head, which binds in the middle the two sides of the ship. It is painted white, like all the rest, and is difficult to see. In every position in life there is always the worm in the bud or thorn in the flesh—or, at any rate, some dark spot. On board the China the dark spot for me is that detestable white bar. Not only am I perpetually knocking [pg 37]my head against it, but it reminds me unpleasantly of the frailty of human things. It is very thin, and yet, if I am to believe the engineer, it is this bar alone which, in very bad weather, prevents the enormous shell of the boat from breaking in half. There are moments when one’s life hangs on a thread; here it hangs on an iron bar. That is better, perhaps, but it is not enough.”
The fine vessels of the company then running were, although perhaps the most commodious in the world, hardly the safest. The distance between San Francisco and Japan is 5,000 miles, and, barring a few hundred miles on the coasts of the latter, the ocean is almost one grand calm lake. But cyclones occur in the Japanese seas when the high-built American boats are not safe.
Baron Hübner gives us some notes on the passengers on board, which included nine nationalities. Among them was a dignified and venerable Parsee merchant, a merchant prince in his way, who had wished to study European manners, and so had proceeded as far as San Francisco. What he saw there impressed him so unfavourably, that he immediately took passage back again. What he observed, indeed, filled him with disgust. “The men,” said he, “what a lack of dignity! Never in the streets of our towns will you be shocked by the sight of drunkards and bad women.”
Hübner gives also some sketches of the officers on board. The chief engineer is described as a thoughtful and meditative man—a Roman Catholic, deeply imbued with the spirit of religious fervour, and spending his time in the alternate study of theology and practical mechanics. His cabin, opening on the one side to the deck and on the other to the machinery, contained a well-selected, though small, library of scientific and classical books, and was adorned by pots of flowers, which he managed to keep alive by constant care, in spite of the sea-breezes, for they had been given to him by his young and beautiful wife, whose portrait hung upon the wall. For a couple of weeks only in each three months could he see his better half.