Of the three routes to China:
1. The overland, by rail through Europe and Siberia;
2. The westerly, across the Atlantic, North America and the Pacific;
3. The easterly, via the Mediterranean, Suez Canal, Red Sea and Indian Ocean,
the last is perhaps the most interesting and in many ways the most comfortable, for it is possible to take a magnificent mail steamer at an English port and remain on board, surrounded by as much comfort and luxury as is to be found in a first-class hotel, until you land in either Hongkong or Shanghai.
The finest of these vessels are veritable floating palaces, the saloons of which are gilded and decorated regardless of expense, richly carpeted, illuminated with electric light, cooled by electric fans, and where meals are served which would not demean any restaurant in London or Paris. Music-room, library, smoking-room and bar, laundry, barber's shop and delightful marble baths all find place.
On the crack German boats a band plays at frequent intervals, while I have actually seen cold stoves in some of the cabins, so that when passing through great heat in the Red Sea or elsewhere you could close your cabin door, draw up your chair and have a good cool.
I am not sure how these stoves are worked, but believe they are connected in some way with the refrigerator, which makes ice for use on board and provides cold storage for meat and fruits, and that a current of ether or cold air is pumped through them.
In appearance they resemble a French porcelain furnace, abutting on one side of the cabin, and by means of a regulator you are able to reduce the temperature almost to freezing point. Although undoubtedly very pleasant during intense heat, and invaluable for hospital purposes, I question if they will come into anything like general use, for it seems to me that instantaneous changes from a temperature of perhaps one hundred degrees on deck to say sixty degrees in the cabin cannot fail to produce bad effects on the health.
Travelling by the easterly route you meet the sun, which causes each day to be shortened. By the westerly route you go with the sun, which causes each day to be lengthened.