The itinerary of the P. and O. Line from Shanghai to Southampton touches the following ports:—Hong Kong, Singapore, Penang, Pointe de Galle, Aden, Suez, Port Said, Alexandria, Malta, and Gibraltar. There are branch lines between Hong Kong and Yokohama, Singapore and Batavia, (Java,) Pointe de Galle and Australia, Pointe de Galle and Calcutta, Aden and Bombay, and Alexandria and Brindisi. The French route is from Shanghai to Hong Kong, Saigon, Singapore, Pointe de Galle, Colombo, Aden, Suez, Port Said, Naples, and Marseilles, with branches between Hong Kong and Yokohama, Singapore and Batavia, Pointe de Galle and Calcutta, Aden and the Mauritius. Both lines receive a heavy subsidy from their respective governments in the form of mail contracts, and they do a great deal to maintain English and French prestige throughout the East. For several years the P. and O. had a virtual monopoly of the business, and looked with disdain upon the efforts of the French to enter the field. But not only did the French Line establish itself, but other lines have sprung up, and manage to flourish without the advantage to be gained from a contract for carrying the mails. There is one known as the "Holt Line," which performs a semimonthly service each way between England and China; and there are numerous irregular steamers in addition, so that there is no lack of communication between the Occident and the Orient.
The rates of fare in the East are decidedly high, when we compare them with the price of passage over the Atlantic and on the seaboard lines of the United States. From Yokohama or Shanghai, by the English line, to Southampton, or to Marseilles by the French one, the fare is £105, or $525 in round figures. The local fares are higher than this in proportion. It is $63 from Shanghai to Hong Kong—a run of three days; and $108 from Singapore to Pointe de Galle—a voyage of five days. To Java, by the branch line from Singapore, a voyage of exactly forty-eight hours, requires a disbursement of $46. You will save about 20 per cent. on your fare by purchasing a through ticket; but, as already hinted, the saving is accompanied by a restriction of one's movements that more than balances the advantage in the reduction.
At the agencies in the East they do not assign you to a room on the steamer when you buy your ticket, but tell you that you will get it from the steward when you go on board. They give as a reason for this the impossibility of knowing what rooms are reserved, as the tickets are generally bought before the ship arrives in port, and before there is any communication between the purser and the agent. This excuse will not hold good at the beginning point of the voyage, and so they plumply tell you that it is not their custom to assign the rooms except on board, and they can make no deviation from their rules. Generally the ships are not crowded, and so the custom works well enough; in case of a rush of passengers it also works admirably—for the company. The agent can continue to sell tickets to all applicants and assure them that there is abundance of room, although he knows that he has sold twice or three times the capacity of the steamer. The ship that performs the branch service for the French company between Singapore and Batavia has accommodations in her cabin for sixteen persons—eight rooms, with two berths in each room. The agent at Singapore blandly assured the writer that there were very few passengers engaged, and he would be certain to have a room to himself—when all the time more than forty passengers were booked, and the agent had the list in his possession. It may be impolite to say he lied, but he certainly was not mathematically exact. When the steamer sailed she had fifty-two passengers, and they were packed like negroes on a slave-ship. Of course there was much grumbling, but the officers of the steamer referred the matter to the agent—whose fault it was; and the agent was safe on shore, and out of reach of the angry travelers.
Two things are necessary to one's comfort in traveling on steamers in the tropical East—pajamas, and a bamboo chair. A pajama suit consists of a loose sack and drawers of the Chinese pattern, and nearly every foreigner in the East adopts them, in place of the night-shirt of civilization, for sleeping purposes. They may be of muslin, silk, grass-cloth, or anything else that suits the wearer's fancy—some prefer one thing and some another, and there is no way of harmonizing tastes. Any Chinese tailor can make you a pajama suit at a few hours' notice; and if you would be comfortable, you will order half a dozen suits at least.
Around the hotels and on board ship it is perfectly en règle to be in pajamas between the hours of 9 P.M. and 8 A.M.; and on the steamer it is interesting to observe how universally the passengers avail themselves of the permission. Through the tropics, it is generally too hot to sleep below; nearly everybody takes to the deck and makes it his home by day and by night. The reclining chair comes in play here, as it can serve as a bed for most persons, and at any rate it is a capital lounge. It can be bought very cheaply in all the Eastern ports, and no traveler's equipment is complete without it. And the man who neglects to provide himself with pajamas in the first port he reaches will have reason to regret his action. He might even do a more unwise thing than purchase a supply before he leaves San Francisco, provided the Chinese have not all gone thence before he reaches the Pacific coast.
The hours for meals vary somewhat on the different lines, but may be taken as resembling in general the hours on the transatlantic ships, with the exception that they are fewer. As soon as you rise you can have a preliminary coffee or tea, or you may have it before you rise, if it so please you. Then from eight to ten you have breakfast, which consists of omelets, meat of two or three kinds, and curry, the latter being universal and perennial. Somewhere between noon and 1 P.M. there is a cold lunch with fruit, and at 5 P.M. comes dinner. This is not much unlike the steamship dinner of other parts of the world, except that the curry comes up warm and smiling on every occasion, and is eaten by nearly everybody. Few people like it when they first eat it, and few people eat it half a dozen times without acquiring a taste for it that is akin to love. It is conceded that curry is necessary to keep the liver in a proper condition of activity, and the man who does not eat it is very liable to find himself out of order internally in a very short time. It is surprising that such a warm substance as curry should be the proper thing in a hot climate; but the weight of testimony is emphatically in its favor, and we should respect the verdict of time and experience.
There is no pleasanter steamship life anywhere than in the East, so far as the associations are concerned. The brainless idiots that add a pang to existence on the transatlantic voyage are rarely seen so far away from home as the coast of China; the majority of the people you meet there are the possessors of at least a fair amount of intelligence, and know how to use it. Among twenty passengers on a steamer, you will find three or four globe-trotters, like yourself; as many merchants; as many clerks and other employés of Eastern houses; two or three men who have been or still are in the consular or diplomatic service; a banker or two; two or three soldiers of fortune who have been serving one of the Oriental governments in one way or another; and the balance will be made up of nondescripts, who cannot be classed in any regular list. If there are any of the gentler sex, they will be the wives, widows, sisters, or daughters of men who have been making a home in the East; and you will occasionally encounter some of them who have made a dozen voyages back and forth, and know every wave of the sea along the route. The great majority of the passengers are sure to have had sufficient attrition against the world to wear away their rough corners; you will find them social without forwardness, and communicative without being garrulous.
If the traveler is limited in time and money, he will avoid the north of China, and also the western part of Japan; he will proceed direct from Yokohama to Hong Kong, and can take for this purpose a ship of either of the transpacific lines or of the English or French mail companies. The former are preferable, as the fare, when combined with that from San Francisco, is lower, and the steamers are larger and better than the English or French mail-packets. From Hong Kong one can go daily to Canton (ninety miles) in about eight hours; and by no means should a tourist omit seeing this most interesting of the cities of China. From Hong Kong, when Canton has been finished, the regular route leads to Singapore—the English steamers going direct, and the French ones touching at Saigon. Those who wish to leave the regular track may go to Siam by steamers that leave every week or ten days, and, though of English build and ownership, are managed by a Chinese agency, and carry their cargoes on Chinese account. They are nominally freight-steamers, but have accommodations for a few passengers; and the same is the case with the steamers that will take the tourist from Bangkok to Singapore when his visit to Siam is concluded.
From Singapore you may make a detour to Java or Manila, but eventually you will find your way back again, since all the routes of the East lead by this point, as, anciently, all roads led to Rome. If you have a month to spare when south of the equator, you may make a circular trip on a Dutch steamer that goes to all the principal ports of Java and the Spice Islands, and comes around in the end to her starting-point. When back in Singapore, and ready to go on to the westward, you have choice of two, or, rather, of three routes: you can go by mail-steamer to Ceylon, and stop at Galle, whence you proceed by land to Colombo, and Kandy; you can go to Calcutta direct; or you may go to Calcutta by a steamer that halts at Malacca, Penang, and Moulmein a day each, and two days at Rangoon. This indirect voyage consumes seventeen days, but it is full of interest. The direct voyage to Calcutta requires six days.
If you do India by way of Ceylon, you will finish the land of spicy breezes, where only man is vile, and then cross from Colombo to Tuticorin, whence you can go by rail to the uttermost parts of the great Indian peninsula; or you may take, once a week, a ship of the British India Steam Navigation Company, which makes the voyage to Calcutta in fourteen days, touching at Madras and a dozen other ports. As the ship is usually halted in the daytime and moving at night, this mode of traveling is not at all unpleasant. From Calcutta the railway will bear us to the north, and we can see Benares, Agra, Cawnpore, Lucknow, Allahabad, Delhi, Jeypoor, and other cities, arriving eventually at Bombay.