Chapter VI: Part 6

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 11.—I celebrated my arrival in Adelaide with a slight illness, and the hotel people took quite an interest in me. The manager sent his regards, and wanted to know how I was, and when I went to the bath-room I usually met the maid, who spoke to me by name, and hoped I was better. Hotel servants here always know the names of guests. Adelaide took very good care of me, assisted by the maid on our floor. I told them that if they looked after me as faithfully as Mr. Adams looked after his wife on the “Sonoma,” I should feel satisfied. Mr. Adams was an honor to his sex; his wife was ill from the time she left Honolulu until her arrival in Sydney, and during all that time Mr. Adams was a marvel of devotion; even the women said he should really take a little rest. But he would never leave his wife’s side except when the women went down to sit with her; and even then, he walked about the decks in an obscure place, and didn’t seem to be longing for pleasure or company. And Mr. Adams was no amateur husband; he told me he had been married before. There was something about Mr. Adams which convinced me that, had opportunity presented, he could have played a stiff game of cards in the smoking-room, and bluffed his competitors to a standstill, but with a sick wife on his hands he was gentleness itself. He didn’t propose to be talked about by the women on board, and I think he was the hero of that particular voyage of the “Sonoma.”... This has been as hot a day as I have ever experienced anywhere, and the tea-drinking has been enormous. At 4 o’clock in the afternoon we were attracted by a sign reading, “Strawberries and cream,” and the place was crowded with women shoppers drinking tea. No one was buying ice-cream, or the “American soda-water” advertised, but all were drinking tea; every woman was served with a pot, and usually she drank two cups. This is the universal rule here; tea in the afternoon. When we went back to the hotel, the girl clerk was taking her afternoon tea, which had been brought to her from the kitchen. By-the-way, business is picking up at the Grand Central; thirty-one came in to luncheon today. The hotel could easily accommodate three hundred. All the other hotels we have visited have been crowded. Before I leave Adelaide I must ask some one what the trouble is with the Grand Central. Perhaps one trouble is, it has rooms with baths, and other up-to-date improvements.... The best exhibit at the Adelaide zoölogical garden is the roses; I doubt if the famous rose show at Portland, Oregon, can show a greater variety or finer flowers. It seems to me that one-half of the area of Adelaide is taken up with parks, zoölogical gardens, botanical gardens, hospitals, museums, playgrounds, and other public utilities, and in the mountains not far away is a national park of thousands of acres. The people here do not neglect exercise or amusement. You see almost as many people in the parks on Monday as on Sunday.... Another peculiarity here is that in all small orchestras the flute is used instead of the clarinet. I have not heard a clarinet in Australasia, whereas every orchestra in the United States has one. Music is about the same everywhere; we hear the same music here that we might hear at home, in London, Japan, India, or elsewhere. One evening, at dinner, the orchestra played “Every Little Movement Has a Meaning of Its Own,” which is heard everywhere in America, and we coaxed the leader to play it again, for the luxury of being homesick. All the hotel orchestras seem to be paid by the guests; anyway, we always put something in a plate we find in front of the leader.... We find few American publications in Australia. The _Ladies’ Home Journal_ we see in nearly all bookstores, and somewhere we found a real-estate agent displaying the _Journal’s_ pictures of houses properly and improperly painted. The _Saturday Evening Post_ is seen less frequently, and the _American Magazine_ and _Cosmopolitan_ occasionally. A lady in New Zealand told me she read the _Ladies’ Home Journal_ regularly, and greatly admired it, and that it is well known among the women of her country. We see few American books at the bookstores; the bulk of them are published in England.... We are becoming tolerably tired of the kangaroo. Every city has a zoölogical garden, and a big collection of kangaroos. Also, a big collection of an animal called the Wallaby, which is so near like the kangaroo that a tired, hurried and indifferent traveler does not distinguish one from the other. Then there is the kangaroo rat, and the kangaroo idea is carried out in two or three other ways.... We Americans shouldn’t laugh too heartily because Australia was originally a penal colony. In the days prior to 1776, England, instead of keeping evil-doers in prison at home, sent them to work on the farms or plantations in America. After the Revolution, when convicts could no longer be sent to America, they were sent to Australia. In 1787, ten ships were sent to Australia. The ships contained a thousand persons, eight hundred of them convicts, both men and women, and the remainder were soldiers and marines to guard them. The fleet landed at the present site of Sydney, and thus that fine city of more than half a million people was founded.... The boomerang, of which we hear much, is a native Australian weapon made of hard wood. It is made in peculiar shape, and the black fellows (according to the story) throw it in such a wonderful way that it hits the object it is aimed at, and returns to the hand of the thrower. I doubt the story; such a feat as that described is impossible. We have seen no native blacks here, and they are scarce in the interior.... The years 1839 and 1840 were years of terrible drouth in Australia, and cattle and sheep were killed for their hides and tallow. Ten years later came a drouth still more terrible. Then in February came a day which is remembered as Black Thursday. The wind had been blowing a hot gale for days, and somehow a fire started. This swept over the parched earth with relentless fury, and the country was almost burned up; forest trees, farm-houses, wild animals, cattle and sheep, and many men, women and children, were consumed. When rain finally came, it came in such torrents that nearly everything left by the fire was swept away by floods. Australia has always had a battle with drouth and hot winds, but has steadily prospered in spite of these drawbacks. Its people are learning what to do, and what not to do, and great tracts of land formerly worthless are now productive. This is true everywhere; it is true in our own western states and territories. In the United States the rain belt is not extending westward, but the intelligence belt is.... The shop windows of a strange city are an interesting exhibit to a traveler; they are a complete history of the industrial habits of the inhabitants. The most interesting window I have seen in Adelaide contains photographs of amateur Lady Bathers. A clever genius who runs a bathing-house at the beach offered prizes of twenty guineas to the Lady Bathers receiving the greatest number of votes for perfection of figure. A great many young women who had a secret notion that they had Great Shapes, entered the contest, and an enterprising photographer is displaying pictures of the leading contestants. All the contestants must have visited the gallery and posed for pictures in bathing costumes. All of them pose in imitation of some classic figure, and the result is very amusing, for an amateur showing her figure is quite as amusing as an amateur appearing in a concert or in a dramatic performance. Some of the figures are so bad that you wonder their owners ever thought they were good, and all the poses are so awkward that the display is extremely amusing. You have no doubt been familiar with contests where young ladies ran for prizes as the most beautiful woman, or the most popular woman, in town, and wondered that the contestants considered themselves either beautiful or popular, but women running a race for perfection of figure, and submitting their charms to the public, is a still more amazing performance.

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 12.—An unusual thing in Australian towns is that seed stores sell a great variety of flowering plants; instead of buying sweet pea seeds here, you buy sweet pea plants five of six inches high. At one store in Adelaide, I saw a dozen different varieties of plants put up in small bunches, and offered at reasonable prices.... Australia and New Zealand are very Progressive, when active and powerful labor unions are concerned, but not a great deal is done for the quiet and patient farmers; there are no rural mail routes in either country.... There are more banks, trust companies, loan companies, etc., in Australian cities, it seems to me, than elsewhere. In some sections of the large towns I see almost nothing but financial institutions for blocks.... The people here not only know I am from the United States, but they know what section I am from. “You are not a New-Yorker?” a gentleman said to me this morning. I told him I was from Kansas. “My guess was Denver,” he said. He came within five hundred miles of locating me.... At all the hotels, we have noticed that the maids have false teeth. There is something in the water that is injurious to teeth; you see advertisements in the papers offering a remedy. In Australia, probably you see three times as many women with full sets of false teeth as you see elsewhere. And dentists here are like dentists everywhere, in that their false teeth can always be promptly detected.... The duck-bill, interesting because it is an egg-laying mammal, is found in Australia. It is supposed that at one time all mammals were egg-laying; later, these early mammals were replaced by more highly organized descendants. The duck-bill has a bill like a duck, fur like a mole, webbed feet, and is about as large as a terrier dog. It burrows in the bank, as a muskrat does, and thousands of learned men have journeyed to Australia to see it, as an interesting and rare link in the chain of life. An ant-eater having a bear-like snout, and also an egg-laying mammal, is found in Australia. Egg-laying mammals are found nowhere else in the world.... I have heard it said that the women of Australia are a year or two behind New York or London in the fashions. I do not know as to that, but it is certainly true that the shop girls in Adelaide are just adopting the big bunches of hair with which American shop girls disfigured their heads a good many months ago.... At 4 o’clock this afternoon we walked to the railroad station, and took a train for the Outer Harbor, to go on board the “Anchises.” The distance is fourteen miles, and the train made so many stops that we did not get our first sight of the ship until an hour later. It was lying not a hundred yards from the station where we left the train, and we went aboard at once. The Outer Harbor is a lonely place; nothing there except a railroad station and a loading-dock. Most of the passengers had joined the ship at Sydney or Melbourne, and looked us over critically as we walked up the gang-plank. I found I had a large room to myself, on the upper deck, and Adelaide had one just like it. Our baggage having been sent in the morning, we found it waiting for us in our rooms. There are 120 first-class passengers; no second-class, and no steerage. The ship is two years old, 508 feet long, with an unusual beam (which means width, and width means steadiness at sea), and altogether we are well pleased.... An old gentleman and his wife attracted our particular attention because so many had come to see them off. There were many children and grandchildren, and after the whistle had warned all visitors to go ashore, we stood beside the old gentleman and his wife at the rail, looking at the crowd. A woman in the crowd below was evidently a married daughter of the old couple we admired, and she had a nurse girl with her, and the nurse girl was carrying a baby.

“Mother,” the married daughter called out, softly, “did you say good-by to Daisy?”

Daisy was the nurse girl, and the fine old mother said she had said good-by to Daisy, but, to make it good measure, she said good-by to her again.... My room is considerably larger than the one I shared with three others on the “Maunganui.” I have two chairs, a clothes closet, and a chest of drawers, all of which were lacking on the “Maunganui.” On that ship I hadn’t a single hook on which to hang my clothing; in my room on the “Anchises” there are fifteen hooks. If I live fifty years longer, at the end of the forty-ninth year I shall still be telling with indignation of my room on the “Maunganui.” Four men in a room nine by ten feet is as bad as asking four men to use one bathtub at the same time.... At exactly 6 P. M. we got away as advertised.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 13.—When we awoke this morning, rain was falling, and a heavy sea running, but owing to the ship’s unusual width, 60 feet, we did not mind the motion, and went down to breakfast in good humor. One of the stewards informs me that he has worked on many ships, and that the “Anchises” is the steadiest of them all. The weather is bad, but not many are seasick.... A lady at our table has five children and two nurses with her. “And,” added her husband, “at sea, five are quite enough.” These children are all boys, except one, and this girl is known as Tom, she is such a Tom-boy. The girl knows nothing about girls, and has never played with them, and the mother is rather glad of it: usually a Tom-boy humiliates a mother.... The passengers are very nice; a better lot than we met on the “Maheno” or “Maunganui.” Most of them are making the long journey to England.... We are now in the great Australian Bight, which, on the map, makes Australia look upside down. The rough weather of the voyage is usually encountered in the Bight.... In 1806, a certain Captain Bligh was appointed governor of Australia. This is the Bligh associated with the mutiny of the ship “Bounty,” one of the most thrilling stories of the sea. Some time prior to 1806, Bligh, as commander of H. M. S. “Bounty,” was sent to the South Sea Islands after trees and plants to be taken to the West Indies; the English have always been noted for trying to improve their possessions. I have forgotten the name of the island where Bligh went with the “Bounty,” but will call it Island No. 1. He remained there a considerable time; long enough for his sailors to become well acquainted with the natives. Finally, when the “Bounty” sailed for the West Indies, the sailors were mutinous, as they had made friends in Island No. 1, and did not wish to leave. Captain Bligh was a hard man, and, noting the discontent of the sailors, gave them extra duties; if there was nothing else for them to do, he made them polish the anchor. One night, as Captain Bligh sat in his cabin, he was seized from behind by three sailors. He was bluntly told to get into one of the small boats, and row where he pleased; the sailors said they were going back to their native wives and friends at Island No. 1. Seventeen members of the crew, including all the officers, chose to go with the captain, and, with a scant supply of water and provisions, were set adrift in an open boat. Captain Bligh was cruel and ill-tempered, but an able seaman, and, after a voyage of four thousand miles, landed on the coast of Java. Most of his companions died as a result of the hardships through which they passed.... But the history of the mutineers is still more interesting. They returned to Island No. 1 in the “Bounty,” and, collecting their wives and other particular friends among the natives, set sail for a remote island one of them knew about. I have forgotten the name of this island, too, though it is possibly Pitcairn, but I shall call it Island No. 2. Arriving at Island No. 2, the “Bounty” was burned, after being robbed of all its guns, furniture and supplies.... The mutineers quarreled a good deal among themselves; mainly about women. Every sailor had two or three wives, and the natives of Island No. 1 did not get along very well with the natives of Island No. 2. Many murders were committed, and at the end of twenty years only two of the original mutineers remained. These two had scores of half-breed children, many of them grown.... One day a sailing-ship stopped at Island No. 2, the first seen there since the mutineers landed, many years before. The captain knew the story of the “Bounty,” and rightly guessed that the two old sailors must have been members of the mutinous crew. On his return to England, he reported his discovery, and gave the authorities a chart by which the lonely island might be found. Soon after, a ship was dispatched to arrest and bring back the only two of the mutineers remaining.... After a voyage of months, the captain of the ship returned to England and made a strange report. He said he found the two mutineers had become preachers, and were doing wonderfully good work among the natives. The two old men had entire control of the island, and controlled it in the interest of decency and civilization; having become old, the last of the mutineers had quit quarreling over women, and were looking carefully after their stomachs and souls. The captain of the ship concluded it was best to let the two old men alone; and the English government shared his opinion. A few years later, the old men died, greatly to the regret of a large number of half-breed relatives. Captain Trask, of the “Sonoma,” once called at Island No. 2, when in command of a sailing-ship, and met both of the old mutineers; it was Captain Trask who told me the story I have briefly outlined.... Captain Bligh also had trouble as governor of Australia. He quarreled with nearly everybody, and finally was deposed by force. On his promise to return to England direct, he went aboard a waiting vessel; but he broke his word, and sailed to Tasmania instead. There he tried to force the people to receive him back as governor, but they soon grew tired of him, and forced him to leave the island. The result of it all was that Captain Bligh was made governor of Australia again, but for only twenty-four hours; the king probably realized that Bligh was quarrelsome, and no one was punished much for impudence to him. Finally Bligh was made an admiral, and that probably satisfied him.... The early days of Australia, when Bligh was governor, were very rough. The convict settlers had little fear and no respect for anyone, and did about as they pleased. In those days, drunkenness and crime were rampant, and the only way to make money was to sell whisky, pistols and bowie-knives.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 14.—Rain fell again this morning, but the sea is smoother, and we have an excellent prospect of getting out of the Bight without serious trouble. After passing out of the Bight we shall enter a section of the ocean where the air is said to be particularly pure and invigorating; it comes from the pole without contamination with land, and many old, nervous men come to take a whiff of it on the advice of physicians.... Every morning we are offered iced watermelon for breakfast. It is said to be an American idea, but I have never heard of it before.... Every passenger is assigned to a place in a lifeboat, in case of emergency. I think this is a new idea since the sinking of the “Titanic.” I found this notice in my room: “IMPORTANT.—Your boat is No. 8 port. At your earliest convenience please make yourself acquainted with the position of your boat station. The boat station numbers are marked on the promenade deck rail, immediately below each boat, and your boat station is there. If the emergency arises, go to your boat station, and submit yourself to the orders of the man in charge.”... Adelaide has been assigned to boat No. 2 port, so that in case of emergency we shall be separated; she might land on one island, and I on another. I find that the gentleman and wife who have five children and two nurses, are also assigned to my lifeboat, No. 8. But I shall not think of the necessity of spending days or weeks in an open boat with a family of five children; it would be worse than my experience on the “Maunganui.”... There is an Eurasian on board. He is supposed to be as good as anybody, but there seems to be a prejudice against him. An Eurasian is the son or daughter of an European and Asiatic; the term particularly applies to the offspring of natives and whites in India. Some of the Eurasian women are very handsome, but their social position is so bad that many of the more sensitive ones commit suicide.... The “Anchises” is not fast; its run from noon on Thursday to noon today was only 326 miles. The ship has one custom which is entirely new to me: the time is changed every time a watch goes off duty. At sea, the watch consists of the officer and men in charge at any particular time. As a result, the time changes three or four times a day. On most ships the clock in the companion way is set back or forward at midnight, and there is not another change for twenty-four hours.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 15.—People living in a dry country a long way from the sea do not realize that it covers three-quarters of the surface of the earth. Ninety-six per cent of the water in the ocean is pure fresh water, yet so great is the bulk of sea-water that the total amount of salt dissolved in it, if deposited in a layer over the surface of the land, would make a bed over four hundred feet thick.... No one is able to say what is the source of the salt in the ocean. Probably the sea has always been salt, having become so when first the waters gathered on the surface of the globe; but all rivers that flow over the land carry salt, which they have obtained from the rocks and soil, so the sea is probably becoming saltier all the time, just as some lakes without outlet are being transformed to salt seas.... Off the coast of Australia for fifty or a hundred miles, the sea is two hundred to four hundred feet deep, but the depth grows greater as you leave the land, and between Australia and Africa, in places, the depth is more than five and a half miles, being greater than the elevation of the highest land above the sea-level. It has been calculated that the average depth of the ocean is more than 12,000 feet. The plains of the ocean bottom are the most extensive in the world. Here and there these plains are relieved by single peaks, like Bermuda, or groups of peaks, like the Hawaiian Islands.... On the bottom of the ocean there is a constant rain of sediment, formed by the death of animals which have taken carbonate of lime from the waters, and built it into shells and skeletons, which, when they die, falls to the sea bottom. The sea-bed is made of an ooze chiefly composed of remnants of these shells.... The cause of waves is friction of the wind. Waves rarely rise more than twenty or thirty feet; waves sixty feet high have been noted, counting from the lowest point of the trough to the highest point of the crest, but this is very unusual. A wave of large dimensions affects the sea to a depth of two or three hundred feet, and may last for a long time after its cause has disappeared; travelers in ships often run into a rough sea when the sun is shining brightly, and there is no wind. These big waves also cause destruction on the beaches, and the shore-line is always being worn away.... In most parts of the earth, the tide rises twice each day; every twelve hours and twenty-five minutes there is a high tide, with a low tide between. At Key West the tide rises only two or three feet; in some other places the tide rises sixty feet, and comes in as fast as a man can run. It is believed that in some way the tide is caused by the moon.... The sea is more interesting than the surface of the earth, but its story is scarcely intelligible to those who have not been trained in the alphabet of zoölogical technicalities. I read a book today about the sea, and have a headache from trying to understand it. All our rain comes from the ocean; it is said that the evaporation of the Red Sea amounts to eight feet per year, owing to the great heat of the countries surrounding it. One of the most important facts that has been established by modern investigation of the sea is, that there is no region in its vast extent that is devoid of life. Strange animals are found at the greatest depth the trawls of man have penetrated, and very wonderful are some of the forms of life found. The three great laws of nature are self-protection, food, and reproduction, and here the sea has wonderful tales to tell. Some sea animals reproduce by simply dropping a piece of their body, and other forms of marine life are so low that we can barely understand that it is life. There is a fish which hides from enemies by shaking its fins in such a manner as to scatter a considerable quantity of sand over its body. Another fish poisons its enemies; another gives a strong electric shock. Many fish are colored like the bottom of the sea, to escape their enemies; others resemble sea-weeds. And the sea is a vast slaughter-house; fish feed upon one another, and constant warfare is going on. The whelk attacks and devours animals as large as itself; hidden in the recesses of the whelk’s mouth there is a ribbon beset with numerous sharp little teeth, which, by a complicated mechanism, can be worked backwards and forwards in such a manner that it can bore a hole through very thick and dense shells; and, the soft parts being reached, a tube is protruded which dissolves and sucks them up into the animal’s stomach. Certain of the cuttle-fishes, as they pass slowly through the water from one point to another, are able to change the color of the skin so as to resemble the color of the rocks or weeds which are below them. Another very interesting feature presented by these animals is their ability to discharge suddenly a cloud of inky substance into the water, and are thus able to escape pursuit.... The corals are so numerous that they build great islands, very much as bees construct honeycomb. Some of these coral reefs are highly colored; when seen from a boat through two or three feet of water, they look more like a flower-bed than a mass of animals. The corals are so abundant that rocky islands hundreds of miles in extent are composed of their shells and skeletons.... You have heard of the phosphorescent light often seen on the surface of the sea. This light is caused by millions of little animals which emit a light, and they are so numerous that it is frequently possible to read at midnight on the deck of a ship. The same little animals may be seen in the water of your bath, if taken on shipboard at night.... On certain parts of the coast of the Samoan Islands, where we were a few weeks ago, the Palolo worm appears in great abundance in the early morning hours of one or two days at the beginning of the third quarter of the moon, in the months of October and November. As the worm is regarded as a very great delicacy by the natives, the days of its appearance are looked upon as the red-letter days of the year. It appears just at the beginning of dawn, in countless millions, on a date which may be accurately foretold by those familiar with the moon’s phases. As soon as the sun appears, the millions of worms disappear, and are not heard of again until another year.... There are fish that fly, as every traveler by sea can attest, and it is to avoid the bonito that the flying-fish leave the water. The bonito is able to leap fifteen feet into the air, which ability it acquired in pursuing its favorite food.... The largest existing animal, the blue whale, is found in the sea, and it attains the enormous length of eighty-six feet. Although living in the sea, the blue whales are air-breathers. They are able, however, to hold their breath for a considerable time under water. When they come to the surface to renew the air supply in their lungs, they first make a violent expiratory effort from the nostril, and drive a column of spray many feet into the air above them. This phenomenon is called “spouting,” and whalers are thus able to locate the animals. The skin of whales is often beset with barnacles, some species of which are found nowhere else but on these mammals. Parasitism is very common in the sea, and sometimes as many as four animals are found dependent on each other.... Some sea-water animals can only be induced to live in the aquarium when the water is kept as pure as it is in the open sea; on the other hand, several of the crustacea seem to flourish best in stinking and putrescent pools.... It is a fact generally accepted by learned men, that all animals are originally derived from ancestors that lived in the sea. In the birds and reptiles, as well as in the mammals, many things clearly indicate that their ancestors in remote periods, lived in water, and not on dry land. And when we consult the botanists, and find that they agree that all plants must have had a marine origin also, the case for the sea being the original home of all living organisms may be said to be complete.... We cannot tell in what form life first appeared upon the earth. Whether the unstable living substance called protoplasm was in the earliest conditions of the earth formed spontaneously by the chance combination of its elements, or whether some germ or other made a hazardous journey through space from another planet enwrapped in the casing of a meteorite, are questions upon which no light has yet been thrown by scientific observation or speculation. The majority of scholars believe that life originated at the bottom of shallow waters, or on the surface of the seas. Several naturalists believe that some free-swimming form of jelly-fish was the ancestor, and that from this simple start came, by millions of years of evolution, every living thing.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 16.—The tallest man I have ever seen in private life turns out to be a clergyman of the Church of England, and early this morning he conducted holy communion in the music-room, which was attended by about a dozen women. At 11 A. M. he held another service, which attracted twenty-five or thirty. Both services were announced by tolling the dinner-gong like a church-bell. We call the tall man our pastor, and he will seem quite like it after we have been associated with him all the way to Durban. I have spent Sunday on three other ships, but no religious services were held.... Every Englishman, before he has known an American long, refers to the amusing manner in which Americans eat green corn off the cob. I suppose that seeing a room full of Americans eating corn off the cob is a funny sight that only foreigners can appreciate. An Englishman who sits at our table, and who lives at Johannesburg, says roasting-ears are widely grown in South Africa, and that Englishmen there eat them in American fashion. In Australia, I noted that green corn is sold in fruit stores, as a rarity; I never saw it at the vegetable markets, or in the grocery stores. Australian and New Zealand gardeners do not raise the variety of vegetables we have in the United States.... There are fifteen children and a phonograph on board, so we do not lack for noise. The children are better behaved than American children, and under more control; the phonograph is of American make, a Victor, with wooden horn. There are five nurses with the children; one of them is employed by the tall clergyman. American clergymen are not so prosperous, as a rule, that they travel with nurses.... It is so dull on board that last evening the passengers went down to dinner at seven o’clock, and remained at the tables until 8:10. The “Anchises” is introducing an innovation which pleases me: it gives the passengers better rooms, and less to eat. We have plenty, but on some ships there is so much to eat that the passengers are tempted beyond resistance, and eat too much.... We have been passing the western point of Australia today, and the sea has been rough. But the “Anchises” has such a gentlemanly roll that we do not mind it. The ship has ten thousand tons of cargo in its hold, and cannot skip about as do ships lightly loaded. From Adelaide to Albany, the western point of Australia, there is no railroad. The distance is twelve or fourteen hundred miles. Had the government kept out of the railroad business, private capital would have built that gap long ago, and passengers from Australia to South Africa might avoid four days of sea-travel. We followed the ship by rail from Sydney, and would have followed it to Albany, had there been a railroad to that place from Adelaide.... The weather has been chilly, but the latter part of this week we will run into warm weather, which will continue until we reach home. As a result of the raw, chilly weather, and no heat anywhere on the ship, I had a siege with neuralgia, an entirely new experience for me. The only thing to do was to go to bed and cover up well, with a hot-water bag to my jaw. Fortunately I have the best steward I have ever drawn on a ship, and he paid me a good deal of attention.... A young Englishman who sits at our table tells a terrible story of Business. He says that in Johannesburg, South Africa, where he lives, he is often compelled to take thirty drinks a day, or lose trade. I would like to tell him what I think of the statement, but do not care to start a row on board. Any man who says he is forced to drink intoxicants or lose trade, tells a silly falsehood. A drinking man usually admires a man who doesn’t drink. The men who have been most successful in business have not been noted as boozers. But while I didn’t tell the young man what I thought of his statement, an elderly Englishman did. “The Americans,” the elderly Englishman said, “are the smartest business men in the world, and they do not drink as much as we do. And the drinking habit in America is becoming more unpopular every day, and will finally become disreputable.” I have noticed that while most Englishmen “pick” at Americans, they really have a high opinion of them.... I have spent part of the day reading a book entitled, “Around Cape Horn.” It is a common sailor’s experience in sailing from San Francisco to Liverpool. For weeks the ship had terrible weather; it seemed that wreck was inevitable almost every hour of the voyage. I am of the opinion that the writer made the voyage much worse than it really was, in order that he might have a tale that would appeal to publishers. I have spent many weeks at sea, on many ships, but have never experienced any of the rough weather this writer tells about. I have experienced much disagreeable weather at sea, but I have never seen a ship in any danger of swamping. The stories of storms at sea remind me of stories of battles. There will be a perfect rain of shot and shell; pandemonium will reign, and, from the book account, it would seem that not a single man could live to tell the tale. But when the casualties are listed, it is found that only two men were slightly wounded. What a terrific affair the Battle of Manila Bay was! Yet not a single man in Admiral Dewey’s fleet was struck by shot or shell, although the engagement lasted for hours.... The man who has a wife and five children, and two nurses, on board, was talking to me today.

“I suppose you have heard,” he said, “that a young man may marry, and his expenses will be less than before; in short, that two may live on less than one?”

I replied that I had heard the story.

“Well,” he said, “there is nothing in it.”

From noon yesterday until noon today, the ship’s run was only 312 miles. There was once a famous American sailing-ship, the “Red Jacket,” which did a better average than that for ten consecutive days. But it must have had a great run of luck. Sailingships often make less than a hundred miles a day, and, when the wind is very unfavorable, lose in twenty-four hours all they have made in three or four days.... We are followed every day by the albatross: great birds which sail for hours against the wind without moving a wing. The sailors say that the young, after reaching a certain age, and being made very fat, are deserted by their parents, and have nothing to eat for six months. At the end of that time they are able to fly, and seek food for themselves.... In the smoking-room today I heard a man say that every vicious person may be detected by looking at his ears. If the tops of his ears are as low as his eyes, look out for him; he is dangerous.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 17.—The manner in which the male passengers on ships drink coffee in the smoking-room, after dinner, has been getting on my nerves; but just as I was working up a fine case of indignation, I found the custom did not prevail on the “Anchises.” On this ship those men who wish coffee after dinner, drink it in the dining-room, and none is served in the smoking-room. You cannot realize how unusual this new rule is unless you have seen the smoking-rooms of many ships filled with men drinking coffee after dinner. I wonder the captain of the “Anchises” dared order the change, but I have not heard any complaints.... Among our acquaintances are a Mr. and Mrs. Steele, of Sydney. Mr. Steele has been married twice, and talks a good deal about his daughter in London, and his son in Philadelphia. Some widowers who have married again, speak of “our” children, while others say “my” children; just as some men who have been married twice are always talking about it, while others keep quiet, and let you find out about their second marriage if you can. I don’t think Mrs. Steele likes the manner in which he talks about his son in Philadelphia, and his daughter in London, preferring that he say “our” son in Philadelphia and “our” daughter in London. Stepchildren also amuse me; they try so hard to show respect for pa’s new wife, or ma’s new husband, and fail so lamentably. There is always something unusual in a second marriage.... This is our sixth full day on the “Anchises.” Had we been on a fast boat on the Atlantic, we should be landing tomorrow. But this is a long trip, and we are only fairly getting started: we shall not land at Durban until a week from next Monday. Those who came on at Sydney have already been on board fifteen days, and, if they are going to Liverpool, they still have thirty-two days of it. A gentleman and his wife who are at our table came on board at Melbourne, and they will be on board forty-seven days.... Every woman in Australia and New Zealand wears a bracelet watch; the custom seems to be universal. In the United States women wear watches attached to chains of one shape or another, but here it is a universal custom for women to wear watches set in a bracelet on the left wrist.... I believe this is the dullest trip I have ever undertaken, and almost scream with horror when I realize that I shall not see land for another thirteen days. Fortunately we have not been seasick; the “Anchises” is a wonderfully steady boat. But it is as dull on board as on a back street in a country town. Part of the passengers sit on one side of the main deck and part on the other, while some of them sit on the upper or boat deck. All of us walk about a good deal for exercise, and I think we tire of seeing each other go ’round and ’round. One restless woman is going most of the time, and I often hear the others growl: “If that woman would only sit down!” I fear we shall engage in fist fights before we reach Durban.... Two highly respectable spinsters from Australia have attracted my attention. On deck and in the dining-room they are so well behaved that I marvel at them; but this afternoon they became desperate, and left their side of the deck and came over to our side. And at dinner tonight I saw the bolder one looking about the dining-room, hoping to see something to talk about. If these highly respectable women are becoming reckless at the end of six days, what will they be doing in thirteen days more?... A Sports Committee was organized today, to Keep Something Going On. But ship games are about as uninteresting as a Salvation Army street service. A subscription was taken up, to raise money with which to buy prizes for the winners of the games, and I heard it hinted that the promoters expect others to do the giving. There was no great demand for Sports, except in the minds of three or four men. It’s a good deal that way on land when a celebration is held, or a new church built, or money raised for a Y. M. C. A. building. I predict that the Sports Committee will not greatly relieve the dullness. One of the games is a special form of cricket arranged for the sea. A regular game of cricket is so dull that some of our most noted humorists have laughed at it, but sea cricket is much worse.... I was talking today with an Englishman who has lived in Australia a long time, and who married an Australian woman. He says it pleases Australians to be told they are like Americans, and it makes them very angry to be told that they are like the English. He confirms what I have noticed everywhere; that Australians and New Zealanders “pick” at the English constantly.... I am beginning to believe I can see a difference between the colonists and the English, although I couldn’t at first. A woman today told me of her troubles with servants in Australia, and her troubles are exactly like those I hear women complain of at home. There are English nurse girls and Australian nurse girls on board, but they do not mix. The English girls wear nurses’ costumes, but the Australian girls say that is beneath their dignity. One of these Australian nurse girls is not more than twenty years old, and has a full set of false teeth. There are many “American dentists” in Australia (one was shot by his office girl in Melbourne while I was there), and I judge they have a great deal to do.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 18.—I read a good deal, as the ship has an excellent library; frequently I take out two books a day. One I read this morning is entitled, “The Cruise of the ‘Falcon.’” In 1880, an Englishman named E. F. Knight conceived the notion of taking a long voyage in a small yacht called the “Falcon.” The vessel was only forty-two feet long and thirteen feet wide, yet he cruised in it for twenty months, going from England to South America, and thence to the West Indies, where he sold his boat, and took a steamer home. The crew consisted of Knight and three friends, and a boy. One of these friends, Jerdein, had been an officer on a P. & O. liner, and was a skilled navigator and seaman, while Knight was an amateur yachtsman of considerable experience; but the other two, Andrews and Arnand, were landlubbers. The boy was fifteen years old, and had been to sea several times. On the way to South America they stopped at several islands, and had a prosperous and agreeable voyage. Their undertaking was thought to be a foolhardy one, and the newspapers at the time devoted much space to the voyage, but the little “Falcon” turned out to be quite fast, and rode the seas well; two thousand miles were made in ten consecutive days off the coast of South America. Five months were devoted to a trip up the Parana and Paraguay rivers. At Buenos Aires, Jerdein, Andrews and Arnand concluded that they had had enough of it, and quit the little boat. Knight was not discouraged, and hired three Italian sailors, in addition to the boy. With these he put to sea, and had a very rough voyage.... There are two islands called Trinidad; one of them in the West Indies, and the other off the coast of lower South America. Knight determined to visit the latter island, and had a very remarkable experience. The landing was bad, and he found the island an unwholesome and inhospitable place. At one spot on the island he found a great lot of wreckage; it looked as though many foundered ships had drifted in there and gone to pieces. He believed treasure might be found in the wreckage, but the weather was stormy, and he did not know what moment the “Falcon” might be compelled to sail away for safety, so he gave up the treasure, and left the island, where he spent three or four very uncomfortable days. From Trinidad he went to Bahia, and to the Amazon, meeting with all sorts of adventures, finally landing at Barbadoes, where he sold the “Falcon,” and sailed for home on a steamship.... I suppose Knight elaborated his dangers and adventures; talkers do this, and I see no reason why writers should not. Many of his most remarkable stories he had second-hand; the wonderful incidents recorded happened a day, or a week, or a month, after he arrived at certain places. This is true of most very remarkable circumstances; the narrators do not say they witnessed them, but gentlemen they had every reason to believe truthful told them the stories, etc. Dozens of men have told me of the famous pilot-fish of New Zealand, which pilots all ships through a certain channel. None of these gentlemen have actually seen the pilot-fish at work, but they met a gentleman only last week, or the week before, who had seen it. By-the-way, a recent Sydney paper says the famous pilot-fish has not been seen in six months; it is feared that he has been killed by the crew of some whaling-ship.... Another favorite story is of the fogs in London, yet I have never seen anyone who has witnessed one of these fogs. And the _Scientific American_ stated not long ago that the old-fashioned London fog has disappeared; that one has not been seen in a good many years.... Speaking of whalers, it is generally agreed that in the old days when that industry was flourishing and profitable, the Yankees were the smartest men at the business. Indeed, when an English firm built and equipped a whaling-ship, Yankees were employed to teach the English crew the business. I have been grumbling a little because of this voyage of nineteen days. The old whalers used to be gone three years on their voyages; sometimes they did not see land for ten months at a time. Capturing a whale was as dangerous as a naval battle. The sailors went after it in small boats, and a whale was rarely captured under six or seven hours.... The sea is supposed to be very dangerous. As a matter of fact, a sea voyage is not as dangerous as a railroad journey. Take a hundred thousand people who travel a given number of hours by rail, and compare them with a hundred thousand who travel a like number of hours by sea, and those traveling by sea will have very much the best of it, so far as safety is concerned. Indeed, going to sea is safer than staying at home. Ever remark the great number of people who are killed around home? The newspapers are full of dreadful accidents occurring in quiet, rural communities where life is supposed to be particularly safe. Every time a farmer hitches up a team, he runs a risk. A buggy-ride is dangerous; the hold-back straps are liable to break, in going down hill; and a buggy running onto the heels of a horse is almost sure to cause an accident. And public streets and roads are more dangerous than ever since automobiles became so numerous.... In seacoast towns everywhere may be seen thousands of old men who have spent their lives at sea almost without accident. An insurance company regards a seaman as a safe risk; as safe as a farmer. It isn’t the danger that should keep you off the sea; it is seasickness, and four in a room 9×10 feet. Nor is it the expense that should keep you off the sea. For this voyage of practically twenty days I pay $150; or $7.50 a day. It would cost that at a New York hotel for room and board. And there are sea voyages much cheaper than this one: there is a White Star boat running between Sydney and London, by way of South Africa, which charges about $5 a day for the journey. It combines first, second and third-class into one class, but is said to be very fair.