A few hours' journey by railway and we are at Marseilles, where (especially at the 'Grand Hotel') it is an understood and settled thing that every Englishman is on his way, to or from Italy or India, and it requires considerable perseverance to impress upon the attendants that the steamer which sails at noon for Algiers is the one on which our baggage is to be placed, and it is almost impossible to persuade the driver of a fiacre that we do not want to go by the boat just starting for Civita Vecchia or Leghorn.
On stepping on board it almost seems as if there were some mistake, for we appear to be the only passengers on the after deck, and to be looked upon with some curiosity by the swarthy half-naked crew, who talk together in an unknown tongue; notwithstanding that at the packet office in the town we were informed that we could not secure berths for certain.
We have several hours to wait and to look about us, for the mail is not brought on board until three in the afternoon, and it is half-past, before the officials have kissed each other on both cheeks and we are really moving off—threading our way with difficulty through the mass of shipping which hems us in on all sides.
The foredeck of the Akhbar is one mass of confusion and crowding, but the eye soon detects the first blush of oriental colour and costume, and on nearer inspection it is easy to distinguish a few white bournouses moving through the crowd. There are plenty of Zouaves in undress uniforms, chiefly young men, with a superfluity of medals and the peculiar swagger which seems inseparable from this costume; others old and bronzed, who have been to Europe on leave and are returning to join their regiments. Some parting scenes we witness between families of the peasant order, of whom there appear to be a number on board, and their friends who leave in the last boat for the shore. These, one and all, take leave of each other with a significant 'au revoir,' which is the key-note to the whole business, and tells us (who are not studying politics and have no wish or intention, to trouble the reader with the history or prospects of the colony) the secret of its ill-success, viz.:—that these colonists intend to come back, and that they are much too near home in Algeria.
Looking down upon the fore-deck, as we leave the harbour of Marseilles, there seems scarcely an available inch of space that is not encumbered with bales and goods of all kinds; with heaps of rope and chain, military stores, piles of arms, cavalry-horses, sheep, pigs, and a prodigious number of live fowls.
On the after-deck there are but six passengers, there is a Moorish Jew talking fluently with a French commercial traveller, a sad and silent officer of Chasseurs with his young wife, and two lieutenants who chatter away with the captain; the latter, in consideration of his rank as an officer in the Imperial Marine, leaving the mate to take charge of the vessel during the entire voyage. This gentleman seems to the uninitiated to be a curious encumbrance, and to pass his time in conversation, in sleep, and in the consumption of bad cigars. He is 6 a disappointed man' of course, as all officers are, of whatever nation, age, or degree.
The voyage averages forty-eight hours, but is often accomplished in less time on the southward journey. It is an uncomfortable period even in fine weather, just too long for a pleasure trip, and just too short to settle down and make up one's mind to it, as in crossing the Atlantic. Our boat is an old Scotch screw, which has been lent to the Company of the Messageries Impériales for winter duty—the shaft hammering and vibrating through the saloon and after-cabins incessantly for the first twenty-four hours, whilst she labours against a cross sea in the Gulf of Lyons, indisposes' the majority of the company, and the captain dines by himself; but about noon on the next day it becomes calm, and the Akhbar steams quietly between the Balearic Islands, close enough for us to distinguish one or two churches and white houses, and a square erection that a fellow-traveller informs us is the work of the 'Majorca Land, Compagnie Anglaise.'
In the following little sketch we have indicated the appearance in outline of the two islands of Majorca and Minorca as we approach them going southward, passing at about equal distances between the islands.
