Chapter V: Part 5

But now for the geography. From Ostend harbour to the mouth of the Scheldt is a dead flat, highly cultivated, and dotted all over with villages and farmhouses, but somewhat lower than high-water mark. The sea is kept out by an ancient and dilapidated-looking dyke, some fifty feet high, on the slopes of which flourishes a strong, reedy sort of grass, planted in tufts at regular intervals, to hold the loose soil together. The fine sand drifts up the dyke and blows over it, lying just like snow, so that if you half-close your eyes and look at it from fifty yards’ distance, you may fancy yourself on a glacier in the Oberland. Blankenberghe is an ancient fishing village, lying just under the dyke, between eight and nine miles from Ostend. When it came into the minds of the inhabitants to convert it into a watering-place they levelled the top of their dyke for some 600 yards until it is only about twenty-five feet above high-water mark. They paved the sea face with good stone, and the fine flat walk on the top, thirty yards broad, with brick, and called it the Digue, in imitation of Ostend. They built a Kursaal, three or four great hotels, and half a dozen first-class lodging-houses, opening on to the Digue, with deep verandahs in front, and they brought a single line branch of the Flanders railway from Bruges, and the deed was accomplished. There is no such a sea-walk anywhere that I can remember as Blankenberghe Digue, from which you look straight away with nothing but sea between you and the North Pole. From the Digue you descend by a flight of twenty-four steps on one side to the sands, on the other into the town, the chief of these latter flights being at the head of the Rue d’Eglise, the backbone, as it were, of the place, which runs from the railway station to the Digue. There may be 1500 inhabitants out of the season, when all the Digue hotels and lodging-houses are shut up; at present, perhaps, another 1000, coming and going, and attracted by the bathing.

Of this institution an Englishman is scarcely a fair judge, as it is conducted on a method so utterly unlike anything we have at home at present. My American friend assures me that we are 100 years behind all other nations in this matter, that the Belgians conduct it exactly as they do in the States, and that theirs is the only decent mode of bathing. It may be so. One sees such rapid changes in these days, and advanced opinions of all kinds are being caught up so quickly by even such Philistines as the English middle classes, that he is a bold man who will assert that we shall not see the notions of Brighton and Dover yield to the new ideas of Newport and Blankenberghe before long. In one respect, indeed, it is well that they should, for the machines here are convenient little rooms on wheels, with plenty of pegs, two chairs, a small tub, a looking-glass, and everything handsome about them. But the wheels are broad, and very-low; consequently you are only rolled down to the neighbourhood of the water, thinking yourself lucky if you get within five or six yards of it. Now, as the occupants of the machine on your left and right are probably sprightly and somewhat facetious young Belgian or French women, and as the beach shelves so gently that you have at least a run of fifty yards before you can get into deep enough water to swim with comfort, the root difference between Blankenberghian and English habits discloses itself to you from the first. Of course, as men, women, and children all bathe together, costumes are necessary, but those in which the men have to array themselves only make bathing a discomfort, without giving one the consciousness of being decently clad. You have handed to you with your towels a simple jersey, with arms and legs six or eight inches in length, reaching perhaps to the middle of the biceps and femoral muscles. Into this apology for a dress you insert and button yourself up (it is well for you, by the way, if one or two buttons be not missing), and then are expected to walk calmly out into the water through groups of laughing girls in jackets and loose trousers. Having threaded your way through these, and avoided a quadrille party on the one hand, and an excellent fat couple, reminding you of the picture of Mr. and Mrs. Bubb in the one-horse “chay,” who are bathing their family on the other, you address yourself to swimming. As you descended from the Digue you read, “Bathers are expressly recommended to hold themselves at least fifteen yards from the breakers by buoys designed.” You do not see any breakers, but there is a line of buoys about eighty yards out to which you contemptuously paddle, and after all find that you are scarcely out of your depth. When you have had enough you return, poor, dripping, forked mortal, to a last and severest trial. For the universal custom is to sit about on chairs amongst the machines; and on one side of your door are perhaps a couple of nursemaids chatting while their children build sand castles, on the other a matron or two working and gossiping. Now, sir, a man who has been taking the rough and the smooth of life for a good many years within half a mile of Temple Bar is not likely to be oversensitive, but I would appeal to any contributor on your staff, sir, or to yourself, whether you would be prepared to go through such an ordeal without wincing? On my return from my first swim I recognised my American cousin in his element. He was clad in a blue striped jersey,--would that I could have sprinkled it with a few stars,--and was sauntering about with the greatest coolness from group to group, enjoying the whole business, and no doubt looking forward complacently to the time when differences of sex shall be altogether ignored in the academies of the future. He threw a pitying glance at me as I skedaddled to my machine, secretly vowing to abstain from all such adventures hereafter. Since that time I have taken my dip too early for the Belgian public to be present at the ceremony, but, like the rest of the world, I daily look on, and, unlike them, wonder. As to the morality of it, I can’t say that I think the custom of promiscuous bathing as practised here seems to me either moral or immoral. Occasionally when the waves are a little rough you see couples clinging together for mutual support more than the circumstances perhaps strictly require; but there is very little of this. The whole business seemed to me not immoral, but in our conventional sense vulgar, much like “kissing in the ring,” which I have seen played by most exemplary sets of young men and women on excursions in Greenwich or Richmond Park, but which would not do in Hamilton Gardens or a May Fair drawing-room. Meanwhile, I hope that as long at least as I can enjoy the water we shall remain benighted bathers in the eyes of our American cousins and of the brave Belgians. To a man the first requisite of a really enjoyable bath is surely deep water, and the second, no clothes, for the loss of either of which no amount of damp flirtation can compensate, in the opinion at least of your contributor, who, nevertheless in these Belgian parts, while obliged to record his opinion, has perhaps a great consciousness that he may be something of an old fogey.

I suppose that a man or nation is to be congratulated about whom their neighbours have nothing to say. If so, the position of England at this time is peculiarly enviable out here. I read the _Indépendance Belge_ diligently, but under the head “Nouvelles d’Angleterre,” for which that journal retains, as it would seem, a special correspondent, I never learn anything whatever except the price of funds. We occupy an average of perhaps twelve lines in its columns, and none at all in those of the _La Vigie de la Côte_, the special production of Blankenberghe, or of the Bruges and Ostend journals.

Oh! wad some power the giftie gie us,

To see oursels as ithers see us!

Certainly a short residence at Blankenberghe should be taken in conjunction with the volume of essays on international policy by Mr. Congreve and his fellow Comtists, which I happen to have brought with me for deliberate perusal, if one wants to feel the shine taken out of one’s native land. I don’t.

Belgian Boats

Blankenberghe has one branch of native industry, and one only. From time immemorial it has been a fishing station. The local paper declares that there has been no change in the boats, the costumes, or the implements of this industry since the sixteenth century, with the exception noticed below. One can quite believe it, as far as the boats are concerned. They are very strongly built tubs, ranging from twenty to thirty tons, flat-bottomed, the same breadth of beam fore and aft, built I should think on the model of the first duck which was seen off this coast, and a most sensible model too. They have no bowsprit, but a short foremast in the bows, carrying one small sail, and a strong mainmast amidships, carrying one big sail. Each of these sails is run up by a single rope, rigged through a pulley in the top of the masts, and of other rigging there is none. The boats are all of a uniform russet-brown colour, the tint of old age, looking as if they had been once varnished, in the time, let us say, of William the Silent, and had never been touched since. There is not a scrap of paint on the whole fleet. In short, I am convinced that the local paper by no means exaggerates their antiquity. Instead of finding it hard to believe that sixteenth-century men went to sea in them, I should not be startled to hear that our first parents were the original proprietors, or at any rate that the present fleet was laid down by Japhet, when the Ark was broken up. The habits of the fleet are as quaint as their looks. There is no scrap of anchorage or shelter of any kind here, the sands lie perfectly open to the north and west, and the surf seems about as rough as it is elsewhere. But the Blankenberghe fishermen are perfectly indifferent, convinced no doubt that neither sea nor sand will do anything to hurt them or their boats, for old acquaintance’ sake. To me, accustomed to the scrambling, and shouting, and hauling up above high-water mark, the running of naked-legged boys into the water, and the energetic doings of the crew when a fishing boat comes to land at home, there is something of the comically sublime in the contrast presented by these good Flemings. As one of the old brown tubs rolls towards the shore, looking as if she scarcely had made up her mind which end to send in first, you see a man quietly pitch a small anchor over the bows, and then down come the two sails. Sometimes the anchor begins to hold before the boat grounds, but just as often she touches before the anchor bites, but nobody cares. The only notice taken is to unship the rudder and haul it aboard; then comes a wave which swings her round, and leaves her broadside to the surf. Nobody moves. Bang comes the next breaker, lifting her for a moment, and bumping her down again on the sand, her bows perhaps a trifle more to sea, but the crew only smoke and hold on. And so it goes on, bang, bump, thump, till sooner or later she swings right round and settles into her place on the sand. When she has adjusted this to her own satisfaction one of the crew just drops over the stern with another anchor on his shoulder, which he fixes in the sand, and then he and the rest leave her and walk up to the Digue, and generally on to vespers at the church, which is often three parts filled with these jolly fellows. Getting off again is much the same happy-go-lucky business. The men shoulder the anchor which is out at the stern, or, as often as not, leave it on shore with their cable coiled, ready for their return. Then they clamber into their tub, which is bumping away, held only by the anchor out at the bows. They wait for the first wave that floats them, then up go the sails, on goes the rudder, they get a haul on the anchor, and after heading one or two different ways get fairly off.

Their costume is picturesque,--thick red flannel shirts, the collars of which fold over their tightly buttoned blue jackets, and give a tidy, uniform appearance to a group of them. The old stagers still wear huge loose red knickerbockers and pilot boots, but the younger generation are degenerating into the common blue trousers and sabots, the latter almost big enough to come ashore on in case of wreck. Altogether they are the most well-to-do set of fishermen to look at that I have ever seen, though where their money comes from I cannot guess, as they seem to take little but small flounders and skate. There used to be good cod-fishing in the winter, they say, but of late years it has fallen off. The elder fishermen attribute this to the disgust of the cod at an innovation in the good old ways of fishing. Formerly two boats worked together, dragging a net with large meshes between them, but this has been of late superseded by the English bag-net system, which brings up everything small and great, and disturbs the _pâture accoutumée_ of the cod, whereupon he has emigrated.

Disastrous islanders that we are, who never touch anything, from Japan to Blankenberghe, without setting honest folk by the ears and bringing trouble! The “Corporation of Fishers,” a close and privileged body, who hold their heads very high here, are looking into the matter, and it seems likely that this destructive _chalut, d’origine Anglaise_, may yet be superseded. It remains to be seen whether the cod will come back.

We have had abominable weather here, but nothing in the shape of a storm. I confess to have been looking out for a good north-wester with much interest. Assuming that the effect as to breakers and surf would be much the same as elsewhere, one is curious to ascertain whether these fishing boats are left to bump it out on the sands. If so, and no harm comes to them, the sooner our fishermen adopt the Blankenberghe model of boat the better. I fear, however, that with all their good looks and old traditions, the seafaring folk on this coast are wanting in the splendid daring of our own ’long-shore people. On Monday night the mail packet from Ostend to Dover went out in a stiffish breeze, but nothing which ‘we should call a gale, at eight o’clock. By some curious mismanagement both her engines got out of order and came to a dead stop almost immediately. Strange to say, her anchors were down in the hold under the luggage (the boats are Belgian, not English manned), and she had a very narrow escape of drifting right on shore. Luckily the crew, managed to get up an anchor in time to prevent this catastrophe, and there she lay right off the harbour, perfectly helpless, throwing up rockets and burning blue lights for hours. Neither tug, nor lifeboat, nor pilot boat stirred, and she rode at anchor till morning, when the wind went down. I venture to think that such a case is unheard of on our coasts. It occurs to one to ask whether there is such an official as a harbourmaster at the port of Ostend, and if so, what his duties are. There were sailors enough in harbour to have manned fifty lifeboats, for the Ostend fishing fleet of 200 boats had come back from their three months’ cruise on that very afternoon. The contingency of riding out a stormy night in a mail packet within a few hundred yards of a lee shore, in front of a great port full of seamen, is scarcely one of those on which we holiday folk reckon when we book ourselves for the Continent.

Coming out on the Digue one night, soon after my arrival, I was brought to a stand-still by the appearance of the sea. It was low water, so that I was about 200 yards off, and at first I could scarcely believe my eyes, which seemed to tell me that every breaker was a flood of pale fire. I went down close to the water to confirm or disenchant myself, and found it more beautiful the nearer I got. Of course one has seen the ordinary phosphorescence of the sea in a hundred places, but this was quite a different affair. The sand under one’s feet even was molten silver. The scientific doctor says it is simply the effect of the constant presence on this coast of great numbers of an animalcule which can only be seen through a microscope, called the _Noctiluca miliaris_. It looked on that evening as if huge fiery serpents were constantly rising and dashing along. People here say that they have it always, but this is certainly not so. On several other evenings the breaking waves were slightly luminous, but scarcely enough to attract attention. If you could only make sure of seeing sea and shore ablaze as it was on that particular night, you ought at once, sir, to pack traps and off, notwithstanding these abominably high winds. I cannot help thinking that, besides a monster gathering--probably a Reform League meeting--of the Noctiluca miliaris, there must have been something very unusual in the atmosphere on that particular night. It was a kind of “eldritch” night, in which you felt as if you had got into the atmosphere of Tennyson’s _Morte d’Arthur_, and a great hand might come up out of the water without giving you a start. There was light right up in the sky above one’s head, a succession of half luminous rain clouds were drifting rapidly across at a very low elevation from the northwest, not fifty yards high, as it seemed, while the smoke of my cigar floated away slowly almost in the opposite direction. Luckily, sir, my American friend was with me on the night in question, to whom I can appeal as to the truth of my facts, and we had had nothing but one bottle of very moderately strong _vin ordinaire_ at the _table d’hote_. If your scientific readers say that the thing is impossible, I can only answer that so it was.

Parson Wilbur, when he is considering the question whether the ability to express ourselves in articulate language has been productive of more good than evil, esteems his own ignorance of all tongues except Yankee and the dead languages as “a kind of martello tower, in which I am safe from the furious bombardments of foreign garrulity.” There is something comforting and fascinating in this doctrine, but still on the whole it is decidedly disagreeable to be reduced to signs for purposes of intercourse, as is generally the case here. Not one soul in a hundred can speak French. Their talk sounds like a sewing machine, with an occasional word of English interspersed in the clicking. I am told that if you will only talk broad Durham or Yorkshire they will understand you, but I do not believe it, as the sounds are quite unlike. The names of these people are wonderful. For instance, those on the bathing machines just opposite my hotel are, Yan Yooren, Yan Yulpen, Siska Deneve, Sandelays, and Colette Claes, abbreviated into Clotty by two English schoolboys who have lately appeared, and are the worst dressed and the best bathers of all the young folk here. They are fast friends, I see, with a young Russian, whose father, an old officer, sits near me at the _table d’hôte_. Poor old boy! I never saw a man so bored, in fact he has disclosed to me that he can stand it no longer. Blankenberghe has been quite too much for him. Lest it should also prove so to your readers, I will end with his last words (though I by no means endorse his judgment of the little Flemish watering-place), “_Maintenant je n’y puis plus!_”

AMERICA

_My father in 1870 went to America for the first time. His time was so much occupied there that he could write only home letters. My mother has allowed me to make extracts from these, thinking that they serve to introduce his later letters from America, which were addressed to the _Spectator_._

_It was owing to the fact of my father’s having publicly taken the side of the North in the Civil War that his reception in the United States in 1870 was so particularly warm and hearty._

Peruvian, 6.45 p.m.

Here I am, in my officer’s cabin, a small separate hole in our little world on the water, all to myself. At this moment I look out of my porthole and see the Welsh mountains coming out against a bed of daffodil sky, for though it has been misty all day it is now a lovely clear evening. The sea is quite calm, and there is scarcely any motion in the ship. The tea-bell is ringing, so I must stop for a little, but I shall have plenty of time to tell you all that has happened as yet, as we shall be lying off Londonderry nearly all day to-morrow. The mail does not come off to us till about 5 P.M., and we shall be there about nine in the morning or thereabouts. I may perhaps run up to Derry to see the old town and the gate and walls, etc., sacred to the glorious, pious, and immortal memory of the great and good king William.

8.45 p.m.

Tea was excellent, and afterwards R------ and I went on deck, and saw the sun go down gloriously in the line of our ship’s course; we were steaming right up a great road of fire. The sea gets calmer and calmer, and, in fact, there couldn’t be less movement if we were in Greenwich reach. So now for the narrative of all my adventures since I left you at the window. The moment we got on board, there was the rush and scramble for places at the saloon table, which Harry I------ warned me about. We were on board amongst the first, but agreed not to join the scramble, taking any places that might happen to be going. There is something so ludicrously contemptible to me in seeing people eagerly and seriously struggling about such matters that I am quite unable to join in the worry. I doubt if I could even if the ship were going down, and we were all taking to the boats. It isn’t the least from any virtuous or heroic feeling, but simply from the long dwelling in the frame of mind described in a chapter in _Past and Present_. When every one had taken the seats they liked, we settled down very comfortably into two which were vacant, and which, for all I can see, are as good as any of the rest.

8 a.m., Friday.

Off the north coast of Ireland, and a splendid coast it is. A stout party, on whom I do not the least rely, told me an hour or so ago, when I first went on deck, that we were passing the Giant’s Causeway. The morning is deliciously fresh, and there is just a little roll in the vessel which is slightly discomforting some of the passengers, I see. I slept like a top without turning, for which, indeed, I haven’t room in my tray on the top of the drawers. My only mishap has been that when they were sluicing the decks this morning, the water running down the ship’s side naturally turned into my wide-open porthole to see if I was getting up. The device was quite successful, as I shot out of bed at once to close it up and save my things lying on the sofa below. No damage done fortunately.

9.30 a.m., Friday.

Here we are lying quietly at anchor in Lough Foyle after an excellent breakfast. We wait here for the mails, but as it is nineteen miles I find by road up to Derry, I shall not make the attempt. The plot thickens on board, and I am already deeply interested. There are 150 emigrants from the East End, who are being taken over by their parson and a philanthropist whose name I haven’t caught yet. I have been forward amongst these poor folk, and have won several hearts or at least opened many mouths by distributing some few spare stamps I luckily had in my pocket. Lovely as the morning is, and delicious as the contrast between the exquisite air on deck, where they are all sitting, when contrasted with Whitechapel air, I can’t help looking at them with very mingled feelings. They are a fine steady respectable class of poor. The women nursing and caring for their children with grave, serious, sweet faces, and the men really attentive. All of them anxious to send off scraps of letters to their friends in Great Babylon. There is one slip of the foredeck roped off entirely for nursing mothers and small children, and there are a lot of quaint little plumps rolling and tumbling about there, with some of whom I hope to make friends. A bird-fancier from the East End has several cages full of larks and sparrows, and a magpie and jay in state cabins by themselves, all of which he hopes to make great merchandise of in Canada, where English birds are longed for, but are very hard to keep. He had lost his hempseed in Liverpool, but luckily a boat has gone ashore, and I think there is good hope of getting him a fresh supply. There is a little gathering of the emigrants for service at eight in the evening forward. I didn’t know of it last night, but shall attend henceforth. No thought of such a thing in the state saloon! “How hardly shall they that have riches”!

Here, as elsewhere, the truest and deepest life, because the simplest, lies amongst those who have little of the things of this world lying between them and their Father and this invisible world, with its realities.

On board the Peruvian.

We are well out on the broad Atlantic, which at present we are inclined to think a little of an imposture. There is certainly a swell of some kind, for the ship pitches more or less, but to the unpractised eye looking out on the waste of waters it is quite impossible to account for the swell, for, except for the better colour, the sea looks very much as it does off the Isle of Wight; great waves like the slope of a chalk down, following one another in solemn procession, up which the long ship climbs like a white road. However, it is early days to grumble about the want of swell, and when it comes I may not like it any more than another. After finishing my letter to you this morning, I went ashore to post it, and found that after all it wouldn’t reach London till to-morrow night. So I sent you a telegram, which I hope you got before bed-time at any rate, and redirected my letter to Cromer. To pass the time I took a jaunting car with two other passengers, and we drove to an old castle looking over Lough Foyle, formerly a stronghold of the O’Doherty’s till it was sacked and knocked about their ears by an expedition of Scotch Campbells, who did a good work for the district by destroying it. We found lots of shamrock in the ruins, and enjoyed the drive and still more a bathe afterwards. The country seems very prosperous. The people, strapping, light-haired, blue-eyed Celts, handsome and well-to-do; in fact, evidently much better fed and better educated than almost any English country district I know. The mails came down from Derry in a tender, which brought us the news of the first battle and the Prussian victory, which I for one always looked for, and we got away by seven, two hours later than we expected. However, the wind is fair and we are making famous way, and by the time I get up in the morning I expect we shall be 200 miles from the Irish coast.

9.30 p.m., Saturday.

A long calm day and we have made a splendid run--shall be in Quebec in good time to-morrow week if this weather holds; but knowing persons say it won’t, and that we have seen the last of fine weather, and must look out for squalls--for why? the wind has gone round against the sun, and it has settled to rain hard with a barometer steadily going down. The Roman Catholic bishop (who is not very expert in weather that I know of, but is a very, jovial party, who enjoys his cigar and gossip, and was one of the first to go in for a game of shovel-board on deck this morning) declares that we shall have it fine all the way, as he has made the passage six times and has never had bad weather yet. In any case I hope it won’t be rough to-morrow, for we are to have a real treat in the way of spiritual dissipation. First, the bishop is to have some kind of mass and preach a short sermon at nine (N.B. a time-table conscience clause is to run all day, so that only latitudinarians like me will go in for it all). Then the captain who is a rare good fellow, with a spice of sentiment about him, which sits so well on such a bulletheaded, broad-shouldered, resolute Jack-Tar, has his own service at eleven, in which he will do the priest himself, an excellent example, with a sermon by the emigrant parson, whose name is H------, afterwards. These in the saloon; then at 2.30 a service in the steerage by H------, or G------, the other parson, and a final wind up, also in the steerage at 7.30. G------is the clergyman of Shaftesbury, George Glyn’s borough; was formerly in the Navy, and was in the Ragged School movement of ’48, ’49, when I used to go off twice a week in the evening to Ormond Yard, when poor old M------ had the gas turned out, and his hat knocked over his eyes by his boys. He knew Ludlow and Furnival, but I don’t remember him. However, he is a right good fellow, and gave us a really good _extempore_ prayer last night at the midships’ service. The steerage is certainly most interesting. There are now nearly 500 emigrants on board there, and the captain says they are about the best lot he has ever had. Going round this morning I was struck by a dear little light-haired girl, who was standing with her arm round the neck of a poor woman very sick and ill, and such tenderness and love in her poor little face as she turned it up to us as almost brought tears into one’s eyes. Of course I thought the woman was her mother. No such thing; she was no relation at all. The little dear had never seen her till she met her on board, but was attracted by her misery, and had never left her side since she had been so ill. The poor woman had two strapping daughters on board who had never been near her. How strangely folk are fixed up in this queer world.

Monday.

We know what a good swell in mid-Atlantic means at last. We were pitching when I went to bed, finding it hard to get on with my penmanship. Off I went as fast as usual, and never woke except for one moment to grunt and turn round, or rather, try to turn round, in my tray on top of the drawers at something which sounded like a crash. In the morning we were swinging and bowing and jerking, so that I had to wait for a favourable moment to bolt out of bed for fear of coming a cropper if I didn’t mind.

As soon as I was out I saw what the crash had been in the night. My big portmanteau, which had been set on its end the night before, had had a jumping match with my water-jug in the night. Both of them had thrown a somersault across the cabin against the door, but the jug being brittle (jugs shouldn’t jump against portmanteaus), and coming down undermost, had gone all into little bits, and the water, all that wasn’t in my shoes at least, had soaked my carpet at the door end. But it was a glorious bright morning and the dancing hills of water and the bounding ship sent me up dancing on the deck. My high spirits were a little subdued after breakfast, for I had scarcely got on deck when parson H------ came to me to say the emigrants wanted me to give them an address. Well, I couldn’t refuse, as my heart is full of them, poor dear folk, so down I went to get my ideas straight, and put down the heads on paper. I thought I wouldn’t miss the air, though, so set open my porthole window, which as I told you is about a foot across, and set to work--as I write, this blessed porthole is about a yard away from my right ear, and perhaps two feet above my head. Well, I was just getting into swing with my work, when suddenly a great pitch, and kerswash! in comes all of a wave that could squeeze through my porthole, right on to my ear and shoulder, over my desk, drenching all my papers, lucifer-match boxes, hair-brushes, wideawake, tobacco-pouch and other chattels, and flooding all of my floor which my water-jug had left dry. I bolted to the porthole and closed him up before another curious wave could come prying in, and soon rubbed everything dry again with the help of the Captain’s cabin-boy, and no harm is done except that I have to sit with my feet up on my portmanteau while I write. This sheet was dowsed in my shower-bath this morning, but I laid it on my bed, and it seems all right now and doesn’t even blot; I shall however envelope it now with another sheet for safety, as I’m not going to keep my porthole shut notwithstanding the warning, and I don’t want my letters to you floated again.

Peruvian, 9th August 1870.

Since I put my last sheet into No. 1 envelope, everything in the good ship _Peruvian_ has been dancing. The long tables in the saloon, at which we are always eating and drinking, have been covered with a small framework, over which the cloth is laid, and which has the effect of dividing them into three compartments; a sort of trough down each side in which are the dishes. Notwithstanding these precautions there are constant catastrophes in the shape of spoons, forks, tumblers, and sometimes plates, jumping the partitions suddenly as the ship heels over. The story of the Yankee skipper saying to the lady on his left, “I’ll trouble you, marm, for that ’ere turkey--” the bird in question having fled from the table into her lap as he was beginning to serve it--becomes quite commonplace. How the steward’s men get about with plates and dishes, goodness knows; but though there is a constant clatter and smash going on all over the ship I haven’t seen them drop anything. I am almost the only passenger who hasn’t even had a twinge of squeamishness, but we muster pretty well considering all things. The Captain is one of the cheeriest fellows alive, and keeps up the spirits of all the women. If he sees any one of them who is still about looking peeky, he whisks her off under his arm and walks her up and down the deck, where they stagger along together, and the fresh breeze soon revives the damsel. He is a sort of temporary father to all the girls, and constantly has, it seems, three or four entrusted to him to take over or bring back.

Of course there is a great deal of discomfort on board, but I have visited the steerage and am delighted with the arrangements for feeding, ventilation, etc. To poor seasick people, however, it must be very trying. This morning I carried off to my cabin a poor forlorn young married couple, whom I had noticed on shore at Moville, and afterwards on board. I am sure they hadn’t been married a week, and they were evidently ready to eat one another. When I saw them settling down on a large bench in a covered place amidships where were twenty or thirty folk, mostly ill, and several men smoking, she with her poor head tied up tidily in a red handkerchief nestling on to his shoulder, I couldn’t stand it, and took them off to my cabin, where they could nurse one another for a few hours’ in peace. We have had a birth too on board, and mother and child, I am glad to say, are doing well. She is a very nice woman, I am told by one of the ladies who visits her, the wife of a school teacher. The baby is to have Peruvian for one of its names. I have really enjoyed the rough weather much; it has never been more than half a gale, I believe, though several men have been thrown from the sofas to the cabin floor, and more or less bruised. The cheery Captain has comforted us all by announcing that we shall be through the storm before midnight.

Up the St. Lawrence they say we shall want light summer clothing. If the weather settles down we are to have an amateur concert on board, which will be, I take it, very lame on the musical side, but amusing in other ways.

R------ was entrusted by the Captain with the task of getting it up, and before we got into rough weather had booked some six or seven volunteers. I daresay he will be well enough to-morrow morning to go on with it. My address is of course postponed for the present.

Wednesday.

The Captain was quite right--we sailed clear out of the storm before midnight yesterday, and though to-day some swell is left, it is so calm that the saloon tables have quite filled up again at meal-times. I was of course nailed by the parson for my address in the afternoon, and placed on one of the flat skylights amidships, as no other equally convenient and fixed stump could be found. As I know you would sooner get rubbish of mine than poetry of any one else, I give the outline. “I was there,” I said, “at their parson’s request, to talk, but it seemed to me that in the grand scene we were in, the great waves, the bright sky, the free breezes, could talk to them more eloquently than human lips. We were wont to use proverbs all our lives without realising their meaning. ‘We’re all in the same boat’ had never impressed me till now. Our week’s experience showed us before all things that the first duty of those in the same boat was to help, comfort, and amuse the rest. If I could do either I should be glad. What were we to talk about? (Shouts of ‘Canada.’) Well we would come to Canada, but first a word or two of the old country they were leaving. Love of our birthplace, otherwise called patriotism, is one of the strongest and noblest passions God has planted in man’s heart. You have a great birthright as Englishmen, are members, however humble, of the nation which has spread free speech and free thought round the world, which was the first to declare that her flag never should fly over a slave. Fellow-countrymen of Wycliffe, Shakespeare, Milton. Wherever you go cherish these memories, be loyal to the old country, keep a soft place in your heart for the land of your birth. You are now making the passage from the old world to the new, enjoying one of those rare resting-places which God gives us in our lives. It is time for bracing up the whole man for new effort, for casting off old, bad habits. One strong resolution made at such times often is the turning-point in men’s lives. As to the land you are going to, Remember you are getting a fresh start in life and all will depend on yourselves. In the old land there is often not enough work for strong and willing hands; in the new there are a hundred openings, and in all more work than hands. One thing wanted is honest, hard work. Whatever your hands find to do, do it with all your might, and you are sure of comfort and independence. Your new home is England’s eldest child and has a great destiny to work out. Be loyal therefore and true to your birthplace, keeping old memories alive and giving her a share of your love; be loyal to your new home, giving her your best work; above all, be loyal and true to yourselves and you shall not be false to any man or any land.” This, spread over half an hour, was my talk.

When I had finished I called on the Captain, who warned them against drink in a straightforward sailor’s speech. Then a grizzled old boy, who had been calling out “That’s true” whenever I spoke of hard work, scrambled up on the skylight and told them that he had come out thirty years ago from England with nine shillings in his pocket and seven children. He had given each of his daughters fifteen hundred dollars on their marriage, and helped each of his sons into a farm, and had a farm of his own, which he was going back to after visiting his old home in Cornwall. All this he had done by hard work. He was a blacksmith, but would turn his hand to anything. Times were just as good now as then, and every one of them might do the same. This was a splendid clencher to the nail I had tried to drive in. The parson wound up with more advice as to liquor, and an account of how well the sixteen hundred he had already sent out had done. The whole was a great success, and we all went off to dinner in the cabin in high spirits. If the fair weather lasts we shall see land to-morrow afternoon. To-morrow night we are to have our concert. My young couple have turned up trumps: he plays the old piano in the saloon famously, being an excellent musician, and she sings, they say, nicely when not sea-sick. The Canadians on board assure him he will be caught up as an organist directly to help out his other means of livelihood. Then for Friday we are to have “Box and Cox” in the cabin, played by the Captain and R------, who knows the part of

Cox perfectly already, having played it at Cambridge. Mrs. Bouncer has not yet been fixed on, but a nice little Canadian girl will, I think, play it.

Tuesday evening.

We had a fog this morning which lost us a couple of hours, seeing however, as compensation, a fog rainbow--a colourless arch, which as you looked over the side seemed to spring from the two ends of the ship. As the fog cleared away and we went ahead we saw an iceberg to the north, which soon looked like a great white lion lying on the horizon. During the day, which has been wonderfully bright and cold, we have seen several more icebergs and a lot of whales, one of which came quite close to the ship. We sighted land about seven, and in six miles more we should have passed into the Bay of St. Lawrence, when a rascally fog came on and forced us to lay-to. The Captain can’t leave the deck, so we didn’t have our concert, and we are all going to bed anxious to hear the screw at work again.

Friday.

We lay-to all last night, the jolly Captain up on the bridge, to watch for any lifting of the fog, so that he might go ahead at once; but the fog wouldn’t lift, and so we lay until eight this morning. Just before breakfast it cleared, and away we went, and soon entered the strait between Newfoundland and Labrador. By the time we had done breakfast we were running close by a huge iceberg, like a great irregular wedding cake, except near the water, where the colour changed from sugary white into the most delicious green. There were nine other icebergs in sight to the north, and a number of others round us, just showing above the water, one like a great ichthyosaurus creeping along the waves, or a white bear with a very long neck. Had we gone on last night it would have been a perilous adventure. Soon afterwards we sighted the _North American_, a companion ship belonging to the same Company, running some miles in front of us to the north. We had a most exciting race, coming abreast of her about twelve, and communicating by signals. Then we drew ahead, and shall be in Quebec nearly a day before her. Then we played shovel-board on deck, the air getting more balmy every minute as we drew out of the ice region. We had a grand gathering of emigrants amidships, and sung hymns, “Jesus, lover of my soul,” and others, with a few words from G------, the busy parson, who has recovered from his long sea-sickness at last, and is a famous fellow. The concert of the Peruvians came off with a great _eclat_ after dinner. They put me in the chair, and I introduced the performers with a slight discourse about the Smith family (the Captain’s name is Smith), and at the end they voted thanks to me, imparting the great success of the voyage to my remarkable talent for making folk agree and pull together--very flattering, but scarcely accurate. Then somebody discovered that it was a glorious moonlight, so up we all went, and very soon there was a fiddler and a dance on deck, which is only just over. We are well in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and all going as well as possible.

Mouth of the St. Lawrence.

I am much pleased with the specimens of Canadians whom we have on board. There are some twenty of them, with their wives, daughters, and small boys. They are a quiet, well-informed, pleasant set of men, and ready and pleased to talk of their country and her prospects. My conversation runs to a great extent, as you may suppose, on the chances of farming in Canada West, which is the part of the colony with the greatest future, and I am much pleased with what I hear. Any man with a capital of from £2000 to £3000 may do very well, and make money quite as fast as is good for him, if he will only keep steady and work; and the life is exceedingly fascinating for youngsters.

There is a very nice fellow on board, a gentleman in the conventional sense, who is returning from a run to Gloucestershire to see his friends. He has been out for seven years only, two of which he spent as an apprentice with a farmer, learning his trade. He is quite independent now, and I would not wish to meet a better specimen of a man.

I doubt whether you, being so orderly a party, would quite appreciate what appears to be the favourite form of pleasuring amongst the up-country farmers, but I own that it would have suited my natural man down to the ground. Half a dozen of them, in the bright, still wintertime, will agree that they haven’t seen Jones for some weeks, so will give him “a surprise.” Accordingly they all start from their own houses so as to meet at his farm about 9.30 or 10 o’clock--the time he would be going to bed.

They drive over in sledges, each taking his wife, sister, or sweetheart, a good hamper of provisions and plenty of buffalo robes. Jones finds his yard full of neighing horses and sledges as he is going to bed. If he has already gone they knock him up. They then take possession of his house and premises. The men litter down their horses, the women light his fire and lay the supper, the only absolute rule being, that Jones and his family and servants do nothing at all.

They all sit down to supper and then dance till they are tired, and then the women go to bed; and the men, if there are no beds for them, as generally happens, roll themselves in their buffalo robes and go to sleep. In the morning they breakfast, and then start away home again over the snow in their sledges, after the men have cut up firewood enough to keep Jones warm for a week.

There is magnificent trout and salmon fishing, and deer, wolf, and bear shooting, for those who like to seek it in the backwoods, and plenty of time for sport when the farm work is over, or in the winter. At the big towns, such as Montreal and Toronto, there is plenty of society, and evidently cultivated society, though young Guardsmen may speak shudderingly of colonists.

Box and Cox, by the way, went off very well considering that the Captain, who played Box, had been up on the bridge almost the whole of the two previous nights, and consequently did not quite know his part.

Sunday 14th.

Last night we danced on deck till nearly eleven under the most lovely soft moon I have ever seen. This morning we are running up the St. Lawrence along the southern bank, the northern being dim in the extreme distance. There is a long continuous range of hills covered entirely with forest, except just along the water’s edge, where it has been cleared by the French-Canadian settlers. They live along the shore, too close, I should say, to the water line for comfort; but as their chief occupation is fishing, I have no doubt they have good reasons for their selection. There is scarcely a quarter of a mile for the last twenty or thirty miles, I should say, in which there is not a cottage, but the villages are far between. The people are a simple, quiet folk, living just as their fathers lived, happy, clean, contented, and stationary. This last quality provokes the English of Upper Canada dreadfully, who complain that the French make everything they require at home, and buy nothing whatever which contributes to the revenue of the Dominion except a little cheap tea. However, there is much to be said for the Frenchmen, and I am very glad that our English people have constantly before them the example of such a self-sufficing and unambitious life. In two or three hours, probably before our morning service is over, the pilot will be on board with papers, and we shall know what has been doing in the great outside world. I was thinking of telegraphing to you, but as the Company telegraph, and publish our arrival “all well” in the English papers, it seems scarcely worth while.