Another work, by a young lady in her teens, is entitled, “By Land and Ocean; or, the Journals and Letters of a Young Girl who went to South Australia with a Lady, thence alone to Victoria, New Zealand, Sydney, Singapore, China, Japan, and across the Continent of America.” Perhaps the most remarkable, however, of modern female travellers is a German lady,[3] who left Paris with only seven and a half francs in her pocket, and yet managed to go round the entire globe. It must be admitted that she had many friends abroad who helped her, and passed her on to others who could and did assist her in every way. Still, the voyages and travels she made denote the possession of a goodly amount of pluck.
The item of speed is of great importance, and may well be considered in connection with a voyage round the globe. Verne’s title would have been deemed the raving of a [pg 3]lunatic had it been published before the age of steam, while in the first days of that great power which has now revolutionised the world it would have been regarded as absurd. The wooden Cunarder which, forty years ago, conveyed Charles Dickens on his first trip to America took double the ordinary time occupied now in making the voyage; and as a journalist has said, between such a vessel “and such ships as the Arizona (Guion line), the Germanic (White Star line), the City of Berlin (Inman line), and the Gallia (Allan line), there is undoubtedly not less difference than between the Edinburgh or Glasgow mail-coaches and a modern express train.” The Arizona has made the round trip—that is, the voyage from Queenstown, Ireland, to Sandy Hook, New York, and back again—in fifteen days. The Inman line has been specially celebrated for quick passages, whilst their “crack” steamer, the City of Berlin, has made the single trip outwards in seven days, fourteen hours, and twelve minutes, and inwards in seven days, fifteen hours, and forty-eight minutes. The City of Brussels and the City of Richmond have done nearly as well, while other steamships of the same line have made the trip in a very few hours and minutes more time. Think of considering minutes in a voyage of 3,000 miles! The magnificent steamship named after the Orient Company has made the voyage from England to Australia in thirty-seven and a half days, or not very far from half the time occupied by other steamships a few years ago. This grand vessel is said to be only exceeded in size by the Great Eastern; she has a displacement of 9,500 tons and indicated horse-power of 5,400, and carries coal enough for her entire voyage—some 3,000 to 4,000 tons. But she is not to remain unchallenged, for, at the time these pages are being written, the Barrow Shipbuilding Company is constructing for the Inman line Atlantic service a still larger iron vessel, with engines of 8,500 horse-power, capable of propelling her at the rate of sixteen or seventeen knots; she will have four masts and three funnels. And yet another vessel of equal or greater power has been put on the stocks for the Cunard Company. Again, the largest steel steamship, or ship of any kind, has been launched at Dumbarton. She is intended largely for the cattle trade between the River Plate, Canada, and England. She is over 4,000 gross tonnage, and has been christened the Buenos Ayrean. The sums of money invested in the construction of these superb vessels are enormous. The Orient is said to have cost, without her fittings, little less than £150,000, her engines alone involving the expenditure of one-third of that amount. And yet a third-class or steerage ticket to the Antipodes by her costs only fifteen guineas, while the emigrant can go out to the United States or Canada by almost any one of the finest steamships of the various Atlantic services for six guineas.
Many routes might, of course, be taken round the world, England being the eventual goal in all cases. As quaint Sir John Mandeville says, in the first chapter of his “Travels”:—“In the Name of God Glorious and Allemyghty, he that wil passe over the See to go to the City of Jerusalem, he may go by many Weyes, bothe on See and Lande, aftre the Contree that hee cometh fro: manye of hem comen to an ende. But troweth not that I wil telle you alle the Townes and Cytees and Castelles that Men schaslle go by: for then scholde I make to longe a Tale; but alle only summe Contrees and most princypalle Stedes that Men schulle gone thorgh, to gon the righte Way.”
“Although,” says Mr. Simpson, the popular artist, in his work entitled “Meeting [pg 4]the Sun,” “the reference here is to Jerusalem only, yet in the Prologue he states that he was born in the ‘Town of Seynt Albanes,’ and ‘passed the See in the Yeer of Lord Jesu Christ MCCCXII, in the Day of Seynt Michelle, and hidne to have ben longe tyme over the See, and have reign and gon thorgh manye diverse Landes and many Provynces and Kingdomes and Iles, and have passed throghe Tartarye, Percye, Ermonye, the litylle and the gret; throghe Lybye, Caldee, and a gret partie of Ethiope, throghe Amazoyne, Inde the lasse and the more, a gret partie; and thorghe out many others Iles, that ben abouten Inde; where dwellen many dyverse Folkes, and of dyverse Maneres and Lawes, and of dyverse Schappes of Men.’ ” He adds further on in his “Boke” that going all round the world was not unknown even before his time.
“The world is wide,” yet the practical lines for a journey of this sort are very limited. There is the Siberian overland route, leading by St. Petersburg, Moscow, from which it goes about straight east through Siberia to Lake Baikal; and then there is about a month’s journey south, over the Mongolian Desert to Peking; or it may be varied by descending the great Amoor River, on which the Russians have a number of steamers, to Nicolaiefsk; thence sailing to San Francisco, and home by America and the Atlantic. “When,” says Mr. Simpson, “the Shah and Baron Reuter have made railways through Persia it may [pg 5]add slightly to the choice; perhaps when Russia civilises the whole of Central Asia it may open up a new route as far as China; but till that happy period, unless the traveller is willing, and at the same time able, to become a dervish, or something of that sort, like M. Vambéry, he had better not take the chance of risk in these regions. Many attempts have been made to pass from India to China, and vice versâ, but as yet no one has succeeded. The difficulties of such an enterprise are very great, not so much from the races of people as from the physical character of that region of the earth. These difficulties can, however, be overcome; and in evidence of this, we have perhaps one of the most wonderful expeditions of modern times in the journey of the two Jesuit missionaries, Huc and Gabet, from Peking to Lhassa. When they were ordered to leave the capital of the Great Lama, they wished to do so in the direction of Calcutta, as being by far the nearest, and, at the same time, the easiest way; but in vain. By a policy rigidly insisted upon by the Chinese Government, no one is allowed to pass anywhere along the frontiers between China and India.” This writer adds, that when travelling in Tibet he heard of many parties who wished to cross the frontier in that quarter, with the purpose only of having a few days’ shooting of some particular animal which they wanted to bring home; but he never knew of any one who was able to gratify his wish. One man told him that he had taken some pieces of very bright red cloth and other tempting bribes for the officials on the Chinese side, but it was all to no purpose. “It is not easy to understand why this intense jealousy should exist, but about the fact there can be no doubt.”
But dismissing any and all ideas of journeying by land through Europe, Asia, or Africa, our trip will be almost entirely by sea, the trans-continental route across America being excepted. Practically that route is to-day the best if you would reach quickly and pleasantly any part of the Pacific. The great railway is an enormous link binding the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans together. The Suez Canal and the Panama route have been mentioned in these pages—the first very fully; and place must certainly be had for a description of a railroad which is so intimately connected with the sea. But first we must reach it.
The passage across the “Great Atlantic Ferry” is now one of ease, and in the case of first-class passengers almost luxury. How different was it about forty years ago, even on the best steamships of that period! Charles Dickens has graphically described his experiences on board the Britannia, one of the earliest of the Cunard fleet, in one of his least-read works[4]—at least in the present generation. The little cupboard dignified by the name of “state-room;” the dingy saloon likened “to a gigantic hearse with windows in the sides;” the melancholy stove at which the forlorn stewards were rubbing their hands; the stewardess, whom Dickens blesses “for her piously fraudulent account of January voyages;” the excitement before leaving the dock; the captain’s boat and the dapper little captain; the last late mail bags, and the departure, are all sketched from nature, as the great novelist alone could depict them. And now they are off.
“‘The sea! the sea! the open sea!
That is the place where we all wish to be,
Rolling about so merrily!’