Chapter XXXVI: Going Home

After sixteen years of exile in California, I found myself rolling seaward and homeward through the Golden Gate in the Panama steamer Sacramento. The parting gun had been fired, the captain, naval cloak, cap, eye-glass and all, had descended from his perch of command on the paddle-box, the engine settled steadily to its work, Telegraph Hill, Meigg’s Wharf, Black Point, Alcatraz, Lime Point, Fort Point, one by one receded and crept into the depressing gloomy fog, the mantle in which San Francisco loves so well to wrap herself. The heave of the Pacific began to be plainly felt, and with it the customary misery.

The first two days out are devoted to sea and homesickness. Everybody is wretched about something. No sooner is the steamer a mile beyond the Heads than we, who for years have been awaiting a blessed deliverance from California, are seized with unutterable longings to return. All at once we discover how pleasant is the land and its people. We review its associations, its life, its peculiar excitements, and the warm friendships we have made there. And now it is all fading in the fog: the Cliff House is disappearing, it is going, it is gone. Heart and stomach are contemporaneously wretched: we bury ourselves in our berths; we call upon the steward and stewardess; we wish ardently that some accident may befall the ship and oblige her to put back. No! Not more inexorable, certain and inevitable is the earth in its revolution, the moon in its orbit, or one’s landlord when the rent is overdue, than is the course of the stately vessel south. South, day after day, she plunges; the North Star sinks, the sky becomes fairer, the air milder, the ocean of a softer blue; the sunsets develop the tints of Fairyland; the sunrise mocks all human ornamentation in its gorgeousness. Light coats and muslin dresses blossom on the promenade-deck; the colored waiters develop white linen suits and faultless neckties. The sea air on the northern edge of the tropic zone is a balm for every wound, and forces us into content against our perverse wills.

We had a medley on board. There was a batch of sea-captains going East, some with wives, some without; one of the maritime madams, they said, could navigate a vessel as well as her husband; she certainly had a sailor balance in walking the deck in rough weather. There was a tall Mephistophelic-looking German youth, who daily took up a position on deck, fortified by a novel, a cigar, and a field-glass, never spoke a word to any one, and was reported to be a baron. There were a dogmatic young Englishman with a heavy burr in his voice, who seemed making a business of seeing the world; a stocky young fellow, one of Morgan’s men during the war, and another who had seen his term of service on the Federal side; a stout lady, dissatisfied with everything, sick of travelling, dragging about with her a thin-legged husband well stricken in years, who interfered feebly with her tantrums; and a young man who at the commencement of the trip started out with amazing celerity and success in making himself popular. This last was a cheery, chippery young fellow; his stock in trade was small, but he knew how to display it to the best advantage. It gave out in about ten days, and everybody voted him a bore. He took seriously to drinking brandy ere we arrived in New York. And then came the rank and file, without sufficient individuality as yet developed to be even disagreeable.

But there was one other, a well-to-do Dutchess County farmer, who had travelled across the continent to see “Californy,” and concluded to take the steamer on his way home to observe as much as he might of Central America; a man who had served the Empire State in her legislature; a man mighty in reading. Such a walking encyclopædia of facts, figures, history, poetry, metaphysics and philosophy I never met before. He could quote Seward, Bancroft, Carl Schurz, Clay, and Webster by the hour. His voice was of the sonorous, nasal order, with a genuine Yankee twang. I tried in vain to spring on him some subject whereof he should appear ignorant. One might as well have endeavored to show Noah Webster a new word in the English language. And all this knowledge during the trip he ground out in lots to order. It fell from his lips dry and dusty. It lacked soul. It smelt overmuch of histories, biographies, and political pamphlets. He turned it all out in that mechanical way, as though it were ground through a coffee-mill. Even his admiration was dry and lifeless. So was his enthusiasm. He kept both measured out for occasions. It is a pleasant sail along the Central American coast, to see the shores lined with forests so green, with palms and cocoanuts, and in the background dark voltanic cones; and this man, in a respectable black suit, a standing collar and a beaver hat, would gaze thereon by the hour and grind out his dusty admiration. Among the steerage passengers was a bugler who every night gave a free entertainment. He played with taste and feeling, and when once we had all allowed our souls to drift away in “The Last Rose of Summer,” the Grinder in the midst of the beautiful strain brought us plump to earth by turning out the remark that “a bewgle made abeout as nice music as any instrument goin’, ef it was well played.” Had he been thrown overboard he would have drifted ashore, and bored the natives to death with a long and lifeless story of his escape from drowning.

Dames Rumor and Gossip are at home on the high seas. They commence operations as soon as their stomachs are on sea-legs. Everybody then undergoes an inspection from everybody else, and we report to each other. Mrs. Bluster! Mrs. Bluster’s conduct is perfectly scandalous before we have been out a week: she nibbling around young men of one-half--ay, one-fourth--her age! The young miss who came on board in charge of an elderly couple has seceded from them; promenades the hurricane-deck very late with a dashing young Californian; but then birds of a feather, male and female, will flock together. Mr. Bleareye is full of brandy every morning before ten o’clock; and the “catamaran” with the thin-legged and subjected husband does nothing but talk of her home in ----. We know the color and pattern of her carpets, the number of her servants, the quality of her plate, and yesterday she brought out her jewelry and made thereof a public exhibition in the saloon. All this is faithfully and promptly borne per rail over the Isthmus, and goes over to the Atlantic steamer. I am conscientious in this matter of gossip: I had made resolutions. There was a lady likewise conscientious on board, and one night upon the quarter-deck, when we had talked propriety threadbare, when we were both bursting with our fill of observation, we met each other halfway and confessed that unless we indulged ourselves also in a little scandal we should die, and then, the flood-gates being opened, how we riddled them! But there is a difference between criticism of character and downright scandal, you know; in that way did we poultice our bruised consciences.

On a voyage everybody has confidences to make, private griefs to disclose, to everybody else. This is especially the case during the first few days out. We feel so lone and lorn; we have all undergone the misery of parting, the breaking of tender ties; we seem a huddle of human units shaken by chance into the same box, yet scarcely are we therein settled when we begin putting forth feelers of sympathy and recognition. There was one young man who seemed to me a master in the art of making desirable acquaintances for the trip. He entered upon his work ere the Golden Gate had sunk below the horizon. He had a friendly word for all. His approach and address were prepossessing. He spoke to me kindly. I was miserable and flung myself upon him for sympathy. The wretch was merely testing me as a _compagnon de voyage_. He found me unsuitable. He flung me from him with easy but cold politeness, and consorted with an “educated German gentleman.” I revenged myself by playing the same tactics on a sea-and love-sick German carriage-maker. “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” you know.

We touched at Magdalena Bay and Punta Arenas. We expected to stay at Punta Arenas twelve hours to discharge a quantity of flour. Four times twelve hours we remained there. Everybody became very tired of Costa Rica. The Costa Rican is not hurried in his movements. He took his own time in sending the necessary lighters for that flour. A boat load went off once in four hours. The Costa Ricans came on board, men and women, great and small, inspected the _Sacramento_, enjoyed themselves, went on shore again, lay down in the shade of their cocoanut palms, smoked their cigarettes and slept soundly, while the restless, uneasy load of humanity on the American steamer fretted, fumed, perspired, scolded at Costa Rican laziness and ridiculed the Costa Rican government, which revolutionizes once in six months, changes its flag once a year, taxes all improvements, and acts up to the principle that government was made for the benefit of those who govern. Many of the passengers went on shore. Some came back laden with tropical flowers, others full of brandy. The blossoms filled the vessel the whole night with perfume, while the brandy produced noise and badly-sung popular melodies.

The Grinder went on shore with the rest. On returning he expressed disgust at the Costa Ricans. He thought that “nothing could ever be made of them.” He had no desire that the United States should ever assimilate with any portion of the Torrid Zone. He predicted that such a fusion would prove destructive to American energy and intelligence. We had enough southern territory and torpor already. The man has no appreciation of the indolence and repose of the tropics. He knows not that the most delicious of enjoyments is the waking dream under the feathery palm, care and restlessness flung aside, while the soul through the eye loses itself in the blue depths above. He would doom us to an eternal rack of civilization and Progress-work--grind, jerk, hurry, twist and strain, until our nerves, by exhaustion unstrung and shattered, allow no repose of mind or body; and even when we die our bones are so infected by restlessness and goaheaditiveness that they rattle uneasily in our coffins.

Panama sums up thus: An ancient, walled, red-tiled city, full of convents and churches; the ramparts half ruined; weeds springing atop the steeples and belfries; a fleet of small boats in front of the city; Progress a little on one side in the guise of the Isthmus Railroad depot, cars, engines, ferry-boat, and red, iron lighters; a straggling guard of parti-colored, tawdry and most slovenly-uniformed soldiers, with French muskets and sabre bayonets, drawn up at the landing, commanded by an officer smartly dressed in blue, gold, kepi, brass buttons and stripes, with a villainous squint eye, smoking a cigar. About the car windows a chattering crowd of blacks, half blacks, quarter blacks, coffee, molasses, brown, nankeen and straw colored natives, thrusting skinny arms in at the windows, and at the end of those arms parrots, large and small, in cages and out, monkeys, shells, oranges, bananas, carved work, and pearls in various kinds of gold setting; all of which were sorely tempting to some of the ladies, but ere many bargains were concluded the train clattered off, and we were crossing the continent.

The Isthmus is a panorama of tropical jungle; it seems an excess, a dissipation of vegetation. It is a place favorable also for the study of external black anatomy. The natives kept undressing more and more as we rolled on. For a mile or two after leaving Panama they did affect the shirt. Beyond this, that garment seemed to have become unfashionable, and they stood at their open doors with the same unclothed dignity that characterized Adam in the Garden of Eden before his matrimonial troubles commenced. Several young ladies in our care first looked up, then down, then across, then sideways: then they looked very grave, and finally all looked at each other and unanimously tittered.

Aspinwall! The cars stop; a black-and-tan battalion charge among us, offering to carry baggage. They pursue us to the gate of the P. M. S. S. depot; there they stop; we pass through one more cluster of orange, banana, and cigar selling women; we push and jam into the depot, show our tickets, and are on board the _Ocean Queen_. We are on the Atlantic side! It comes over us half in awe, half in wonder, that this boat will, if she do not reach the bottom first, carry us straight to a dock in New York. The anticipation of years is developing into tangibility.

We cross the Caribbean. It is a stormy sea. Our second day thereon was one of general nausea and depression. You have perhaps heard the air, “Sister, what are the wild waves saying?” On that black Friday many of our passengers seemed to be earnestly saying something over the _Ocean Queen’s_ side to the “wild, wild waves.” The Grinder went down with the rest. I gazed triumphantly over his prostrate form laid out at full length on a cabin settee. Seward, Bancroft, politics, metaphysics, poetry, and philosophy were hushed at last. Both enthusiasm and patriotism find an uneasy perch on a nauseated stomach.

But steam has not robbed navigation of all its romance. We find some poetry in smoke, smoke stacks, pipes, funnels, and paddles, as well as in the “bellying sails” and the “white-winged messengers of commerce.” I have a sort of worship for our ponderous walking-beam, which swings its many tons of iron upon its axis as lightly as a lady’s parasol held ’twixt thumb and finger. It is an embodiment of strength, grace, and faithfulness. Night and day, mid rain and sunshine, be the sea smooth or tempestuous, still that giant arm is at its work, not swerving the fractional part of an inch from its appointed sphere of revolution. It is no dead metallic thing: it is a something rejoicing in power and use. It crunches the ocean ’neath its wheels with that pride and pleasure of power which a strong man feels when he fights his way through some ignoble crowd. The milder powers of upper air more feebly impel yon ship; in our hold are the powers of earth, the gnomes and goblins, the subjects of Pluto and Vulcan, begrimed with soot and sweat, and the elements for millions and millions of years imprisoned in the coal are being steadily set free. Every shovelful generates a monster born of flame. As he flies sighing and groaning through the wide-mouthed smokestack into the upper air, he gives our hull a parting shove forward.

A death in the steerage--a passenger taken on board sick at Aspinwall. All day long an inanimate shape wrapped in the American flag lies near the gangway. At four <small>P.M.</small> an assemblage from cabin and steerage gather with uncovered heads. The surgeon reads the service for the dead; a plank is lifted up; with a last shrill whirl that which was once a man is shot into the blue waters; in an instant it is out of sight and far behind, and we retire to our state-rooms, thinking and solemnly wondering about that body sinking, sinking, sinking in the depths of the Caribbean; of the sea monsters that curiously approach and examine it; of the gradual decay of the corpse’s canvas envelope; and far into the night, as the _Ocean Queen_ shoots ahead, our thoughts wander back in the blackness to the buried yet unburied dead.

The Torrid Zone is no more. This morning a blast from the north sweeps down upon us. Cold, brassy clouds are in the sky; the ocean’s blue has turned to a dark, angry brown, flecked with white caps and swept by blasts fresh from the home of the northern floe and iceberg. The majority of the passengers gather about the cabin-registers, like the house-flies benumbed by the first cold snap of autumn in our northern kitchens. Light coats, pumps and other summer apparel have given way to heavy boots, over-coats, fur caps and pea-jackets. A home look settles on the faces of the North Americans. They snuff their native atmosphere: they feel its bracing influence. But the tawny-skinned Central Americans who have gradually accumulated on board from the Pacific ports and Aspinwall, settle inactively into corners or remain ensconced in their berths. The air which kindles our energies wilts theirs. The hurricane-deck is shorn of its awnings. Only a few old “shell-back” passengers maintain their place upon it, and yet five days ago we sat there in midsummer moonlit evenings.

We are now about one hundred miles from Cape Hatteras. Old Mr. Poddle and his wife are travelling for pleasure. Came to California by rail, concluded to return by the Isthmus. Ever since we started Cape Hatteras has loomed up fearfully in their imaginations. Old Mr. Poddle looks knowingly at passing vessels through his field-glass, but doesn’t know a fore-and-aft schooner from a man-of-war. Mrs. Poddle once a day inquires if there’s any danger. Mr. Poddle does not talk so much, but evidently in private meditates largely on hurricanes, gales, cyclones, sinking and burning vessels. Last night we came in the neighborhood of the Gulf Stream. There were flashes of lightning, “mare’s tails” in the sky, a freshening breeze and an increasing sea. About eleven old Mr. Poddle came on deck. Mrs. Poddle, haunted by Hatteras, had sent him out to see if “there was any danger;” for it is evident that Mrs. Poddle is dictatress of the domestic empire. Mr. Poddle ascended to the hurricane-deck, looked nervously to leeward, and just then an old passenger salt standing by, who had during the entire passage comprehended and enjoyed the Poddletonian dreads, remarked, “This is nothing to what we shall have by morning.” This shot sent Poddle below. This morning at breakfast the pair looked harassed and fatigued.

The great question now agitating the mind of this floating community is, “Shall we reach the New York pier at the foot of Canal street by Saturday noon?” If we do, there is for us all long life, prosperity and happiness: if we do not, it is desolation and misery. For Monday is New Year’s Day. On Sunday we may not be able to leave the city: to be forced to stay in New York over Sunday is a dreadful thought for solitary contemplation. We study and turn it over in our minds for hours as we pace the deck. We live over and over again the land-journey to our hearthstones at Boston, Syracuse, and Cincinnati. We meet in thought our long-expectant relatives, so that at last our air-castles become stale and monotonous, and we fear that the reality may be robbed of half its anticipated pleasure from being so often lived over in imagination.

Nine o’clock, Friday evening. The excitement increases. Barnegat Light is in sight. Half the cabin passengers are up all night, indulging in unprofitable talk and weariness, merely because we are so near home. Four o’clock, and the faithful engine stops, the cable rattles overboard, and everything is still. We are at anchor off Staten Island. By the first laggard streak of winter’s dawn I am on the hurricane-deck. I am curious to see my native North. It comes by degrees out of the cold blue fog on either side of the bay. Miles of houses, spotted with patches of bushy-looking woodland--bushy in appearance to a Californian, whose oaks grow large and widely apart from each other, as in an English park. There comes a shrieking and groaning and bellowing of steam-whistles from the monster city nine miles away. Soon we weigh anchor and move up toward it. Tugs dart fiercely about, or laboriously puff with heavilyladen vessels in tow. Stately ocean steamers surge past, outward bound. We become a mere fragment of the mass of floating life. We near the foot of Canal street. There is a great deal of shouting and bawling and counter-shouting and counter-bawling, with expectant faces on the wharf, and recognitions from shore to steamer and from steamer to shore. The young woman who flirted so ardently with the young Californian turns out to be married, and that business-looking, middle-aged man on the pier is her husband. Well, I never! Why, you are slow, my friend, says inward reflection. You are not versed in the customs of the East. At last the gangway plank is flung out. We walk on shore. It is now eighteen years since that little floating world society cemented by a month’s association scattered forever from each other’s sight at the Canal street pier.

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Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:

so may ghastly heaps=> so many ghastly heaps {pg 46}

Is is ornamented=> It is ornamented {pg 117}

Theyr’e no use in bizness=> They’re no use in bizness {pg 151}

envied of many=> envy of many {pg 182}

many another county=> many another counties {pg 188}

as general propector=> as general prospector {pg 200}

succedeed in getting=> succeeded in getting {pg 200}

their first instalment=> their first installment {pg 200}

an aceptance of=> an acceptance of {pg 272}

well have endeavroed=> well have endeavored {pg 289}

came on broad=> came on board {pg 290}

fleecked with white caps=> flecked with white caps {pg 296}