CONTENTS.
| I. | Voyage of the Hampshire | [7] |
| II. | Melbourne | [19] |
| III. | Victoria | [19] |
| IV. | South Australia | [47] |
| V. | Tasmania | [60] |
| VI. | Auckland and Sydney | [75] |
I.
The Voyage of the Hampshire.
Voyage to Australia has in these days become so ordinary an affair that it may seem to require an apology to attempt to describe one, but a voyage in a sailing ship is so different from that in a steamer that it may interest some people. It is, as a rule, only those who go abroad for their health who prefer a sailing ship, on account of the great length of the voyage, in allusion to which steam people call sailing ships "wind jammers," while the sailors retort on steamers by dubbing them "iron tanks" and "old coffins." There is no doubt that the picturesqueness of a sea voyage is quite destroyed by a steamer. There are no, or very few, regular sailors on board; so much of the work is now done by steam. There are no "chanties" or sailors' songs, which help the work to go easily. In a steamer there is no interest in noting the course—they go straight on, and the distance covered does not vary, or only slightly, from day to day. The movement of a sailing ship through the water at 12 knots per hour is quite exhilarating; the ship hurries on by "leaps and bounds." Contrast with this the labouring plunges of a screw-steamer at the same rate. In short, romance is perishing from the sea with the universal invasion of steam. Could the poet have thus written of the Pirate—
"O'er the glad waters of the deep blue sea,
Our thoughts as boundless, and our souls as free,"