Altogether, the modern emigrant's existence on board ship is a calm, easy, indolent, well-fed, and cheerful interlude of repose, amid the storms and worries of the great battle of life. If existence has been to him hitherto rather hard and thorny than otherwise, he finds the voyage out a pleasant interval of rest and refreshment; and, in any case, it recruits and prepares him to better commence the new life in the colony, with good spirits and high hopes, with invigorated strength, and renewed health in both mind and body.
Although it might be thought that social equality would necessarily prevail on board ship, such is by no means the case. Of course there are great differences in the social tone of various ships, but, as a rule, "aft" seldom condescends to mix much with "forrard." Yet there are generally many interchanges of courtesy, as between upper, middle, and lower classes; and different messes will sometimes banquet one another. The "cuddy" will, perhaps, get up amateur theatricals or charades, to which spectacle the whole vessel will be invited; while the "steerage" will return the compliment with a concert, more or less brilliant in performance.
Thus, a pleasant interchange of civilities goes on aboard most ships, and serves to help make the time pass away. Differences of rank and station are supposed to be pretty well levelled down in the colonies. Most of the time-worn prejudices of the old country, it is true, melt away before the revivifying breath of colonial life, yet sometimes "Mrs. Grundy's" awful features will show themselves, hiding the old foolish face under a new and somewhat strange aspect.
It would be interesting to note how many of the most prominent and influential citizens of a colony came there originally in the humblest possible way; and how many of the dregs of colonial society—the occupiers of the lowest rung on the colonial ladder—reached their new home with all the pomp and circumstance of quarter-deck sublimity, and all the humbug and pretension of real or fancied aristocracy. Is the result we see—for these contrasts are to be found plentifully in all the colonies at the Antipodes—what it ought to be, or not? That is the question.
In the colonies, and particularly in the younger and newer among them, a man must perforce be the sole architect of his own fortunes. Industry and energy, enterprise and perseverance pave the pathway to success, and yield a real and lasting benefit to him who holds such endowments. A man must prove what he is, not what he was; his antecedents go for but little, and his "forbears" for nothing at all. In the Antipodean colonies of Great Britain is realized, perhaps, the nearest approach to true freedom; and, in a wide social sense, the closest approximation to the ideal republic.
However, we are still on board ship, and, after an easy and not too eventful voyage of some three months, are looking eagerly out for the first sight of the promised land. Bound to Auckland, New Zealand, our vessel is one of the largest that has yet sailed from Gravesend to that port; and she carries some three hundred emigrants and passengers on board. We have grown so accustomed to our good ship, and to our life on board of her, that we have got a strange feeling that this voyaging will never end; nor does the idea altogether arouse our discontent.
We have had one or two births, and, alas! one poor child has been taken from our little company. There have, of course, been no weddings on board, but the prevailing opinion is that several have been arranged to take place as soon as we get on shore. And the time is very near now.
At last, late one afternoon, as the ship is bowling steadily along with a ten-knot breeze on the port quarter, the deck is hailed from aloft, and the cheery, long-expected, and long-wished-for cry of "land ho!" is taken up by a hundred voices, and rings out across the sea. But there is nothing to be seen for all that; and though more than three hundred pairs of eyes keep anxious ward and watch, darkness falls before an almost imperceptible cloud upon the far horizon is pronounced oracularly by the mate to be Cape Maria Van Diemen, New Zealand's north-western-most promontory.
One may easily imagine that it is difficult to "turn in" on a night when such a fresh excitement fills every mind, but, I suppose, most of us do contrive to get to sleep eventually. With the first break of dawn in the morning there is a stir and commotion all through the ship. Rules are forgotten, and etiquette broken through, as men, women, and children rush hastily on deck to take their first look at our future home.
It is a beautiful summer morning. There is only a slight ripple on the surface of the water, and not a cloud in the blue sky overhead. The gentle breeze that just keeps us in motion blows off the land, bearing with it a subtle perfume of trees and flowers and herbage; how unspeakably grateful to our nostrils none can tell so well as we, who inhale it with ardour after so many weeks at sea.