‘Put out a tier of oars on either side,
Spread to the wafting breeze a twofold sail,’
and cruel, big-headed sharks, which, indeed, followed us almost all the way to England (the fact is that now, when so many cattle are thrown overboard, the Atlantic abounds with sharks), and lovely flying-fish like streaks of silver flashing along the deep and boundless blue ocean. Of these latter one flew on board. It met with a cruel fate. It was eaten by the first officer of the Assyrian Monarch for breakfast. It ought to have choked him. It did nothing of the kind; he, hardened sinner that he was, enjoyed it greatly, and said that it was as good as a whiting.
In the Gulf Stream we found the usual number of whales and porpoises. The latter would play around the bow or race along the side of the ship in considerable quantities of all sorts of sizes. There were other fish of which I know not the names to be seen occasionally leaping out of the water as high and repeatedly as possible, as if a shark were in their midst seeking whom he might devour.
One sight I shall never forget in the Gulf Stream. It was that of a tortoise. I was leaning over the ship’s side, when something big and round seemed to be coming to the surface. I could not make out what it was; then all at once the truth flashed upon me as he wobbled along, paddling with his fins, his head erect, his little eyes peering at the ship as if he wondered what the dickens it was, and what business it had there. He seemed to be treading the water.
‘I saw him but a moment,
But methinks I see him now.’
The sight gave me quite an appetite, though my friend Sir Henry Thompson will insist upon it that turtle soup is made of conger-eel, but in the wide Atlantic one has time to think of such things; day by day passes and you see nothing but the ocean—not even a distant sail, or the smoke of a passing steamer.
People complain of the uneventfulness of life on board a ship. That, however, is a matter of great thankfulness. A collision or a shipwreck are exciting, but they are disagreeable, nevertheless. It seems the homeward voyage is always the pleasantest as far as the sea is concerned, the wind being more frequently in the west than in any other quarter. Perhaps that is one reason why the Americans are so ready to cross the Atlantic. When I left New York, Cook’s office, in the Broadway, was full of tourists, including Mrs. Langtry and other distinguished personages. Mr. John Cook seems as popular in New York as he is elsewhere. Indeed, I was confidentially informed that he was engaged in organizing a personally-conducted tour for the relief of Gordon and the capture of the Mahdi, and I hear from Egypt that he has a chance of being made Khedive, a position which I am certain he would fill with credit to himself and advantage to the people. Of course, there is a little exaggeration in this, but the American tourist has good reason to revere the name of Cook, and so have we all. As much as anyone he has promoted travel between the Old World and the New, and has made us better friends. It is to be hoped that every steamer that crosses the Atlantic does something similar.
I must own, however, that the nearer I approached England the more I felt ashamed of my native land. The weather was villainous. It rained every day, and the worst of it was, I had had the audacity to assure the Americans on board that we had dry weather in England, that occasionally we saw the sun, and that we were not a web-footed race. Fortunately, at the time of writing this I have not yet encountered any of my American friends, or I should feel, as they say, uncommonly mean. However, the weather was fine enough to admit of a good look at Bishop’s Rock, the name of the lighthouse at the Scilly Isles, where we got our first sight of land; you can imagine how we all rushed on deck to see that. In fine weather, I say, by all means return from America in one of the fine, steady, well-built ships of the Monarch Line. The scenery is far finer than that offered by Queenstown and Liverpool. You have the Scilly Isles to look at, and the Land’s End, and the Lizards. At Portland Bill we laid off till a pilot came on board, and we had a good look at the establishment where so many smart men are sent for a season, and Weymouth heading the distant bay; and then what a fine sweep you have up the Channel—crowded with craft of all kinds, from the eight thousand ton steamer to the frail and awkward fishing lugger—and round the Nore; whilst old towns and castles, speaking not alone of the living present, but of the dead and buried past, are to be seen. Even Americans, fond as they are of modern life, feel the charm of that; whilst to the returning traveller the landscape speaks of ‘home, sweet home.’
CHAPTER XII.
COLONIZATION IN CANADA.