Saturday, August 29th.—It was a beautiful sunny morning, and I wanted to carry away with me a happier impression of San Francisco, and so determined to go up Telegraph Hill for a bird's-eye view. The cable-car accomplishes the almost perpendicular ascent in three minutes, and it is so steep that you slip down on to your next-door neighbour unless you hold on. I had a beautiful view of the town on either side; the broad, muddy-coloured bay beneath, with the islands of Alcatraz and Angel; and, beyond all, the Golden Gate, through which we should be passing that afternoon.
I returned to the worry and fuss that seems an inevitable accompaniment to the "going on board." I suppose it is partly that there is no fixed time, and that you may go at any time in the morning, that there are deck chairs to be thought of, and the luggage for the hold, and the luggage that is "wanted in state-room" to be set specially apart. We had a further cause for anxiety in some washing which a Chinaman (an unauthorized washerman, it appeared) had walked off with, and which on inquiry was not forthcoming. The bell-man had told us he would send the washerman, and we naturally confided it to the first Chinaman who appeared and asked for it. I gave it up for lost but the policeman stationed in the courtyard of the Palace, ready to show strangers through the Chinese quarters, spent the morning there searching for it, and brought it forth at the last minute. I was sorry to be going away from San Francisco without seeing one of the most interesting features of the city, the Chinese quarter. In the length of three streets live all the Chinese who swarm about the city. They inhabit cells burrowed underneath the streets, below the level of the drainage, sleeping in bunks placed one above the other. The sights and smells are sickening, but the chief interest of Chinese Town lies in its theatres, temples, gambling houses, restaurants, and opium dens. Wherever the Chinese goes, with his toiling and long-suffering patience, there is the price of labour immediately cheapened; and so strong is the feeling among the lower classes against them that the State of California has been obliged to pass a law forbidding the immigration of any Chinese labourer. Any Chinaman on landing now has to go before a magistrate and prove that he is a merchant, or in possession of property, and that he has come solely for the purposes of trading.
We drove down to the Docks at one o'clock, and went on board the Australia at once.
It was the closing of the first era in our travels, to have thus journeyed over the first of our great continents, to have seen the first of our new worlds, and to have gained the knowledge of a new people with their manners and customs. Though a little marred by the shortness of time, we look back with very great pleasure to our seven weeks spent in America and Canada.
We said our farewell to America as we sailed out of the Golden Gate, regret tempered in leaving her shores by the excitement of going forth on the ocean, in search of other lands and other peoples.
CHAPTER VII
ACROSS THE PACIFIC
At 1.30 p.m. the Australia was crowded with a motley throng of passengers and weeping friends, who were rushing up and down in search of the cabins they were to occupy, claiming the same by the depositing of bags and parcels. There was the luggage coming on board, the chief steward receiving contributions of fresh provisions, a last supply of water being given, apparently to the hold of the ship, by means of a long hose on the wharf, and finally at the eleventh hour arrived the mails.
The warning bell rang; the decks were at last cleared; "All ashore!" rang out. A few parting words from those leaning over the bulwarks to those on the wharf, a rush of the excited crowd to the end of the pier, and we were left in little groups standing on the hurricane-deck, looking suspiciously at each other, in our floating home for the next few weeks.
The Australia looked a noble ship as she steamed through the bay, coasting slowly round the promontory on which San Francisco lies. The captain, the officer of the watch, and the pilot were standing on the bridge, the sun shining on the white sails, the various flags of departure, of the company, and the Union Jack floating from her masts. We sailed between the Angel Island and that of Alcatraz, saw the cliff house, with the waves dashing over the Seal Rocks, looking very desolate and dreary, surrounded by its burnt, dried-up downs. We passed out through the "Golden Gates" into the deep blue ocean. Alas! alas! for those "white horses" and for indifferent sailors. The ship began to roll more and more; she pitched and tossed helplessly in a short, choppy sea, and those already faint-hearted and unhappy at parting with friends on shore lost no time in giving themselves up to mal de mer and—misery.
Needless to say that C. was among the first to succumb.
The table at dinner presented but a dreary series of vacant spaces. An old lady, a great-grandmother to three generations on board, was the only one besides myself to put in an appearance. I confess that I could only just manage to sit through that interminable dinner, and then I too gave in, and crept into my berth very cold and miserable.
At the first start I think everything on board a ship seems depressing. You look suspiciously into dingy corners of the cabins, on to the shabby strip of carpet. The space seems impossibly small for any degree of comfort; the blue moreen curtains, with their yellow cords, jar upon the senses; the water you wash in smells of bilge oil; the towels are marked with plentiful iron-moulds; the washstand is discoloured with much use; the pillows are more like bolsters; and the last straw seems to be the printed regulations, hung up in each cabin of the ship rules, which appear superlatively irksome.
I feel sure nearly all on board would have echoed these sentiments on that gloomy Sunday succeeding our start, when the tolling of the bell at 11 a.m. vainly called us to prayer. The next day brought a slight improvement to some, but the leaden sky and cold wind kept all below in the saloon. The third day there was encouragement for all. The sun rose warm and bright, and brought the poor sick creatures, creeping out on to the decks to sun themselves, looking pale and languid. After this we settled down into the routine of daily life on board ship, a more regular one than one could ever hope to pursue on shore.
It was really pleasant day after day sitting on the hurricane-deck, under the thick double awnings, a hot sun with a cool breeze blowing, dreaming and idling away many a long hour. It was pure enjoyment to look at a sky of opaque blue, and at water varying from the purest ultramarine to the fullest and deepest of indigo dyes. We talk and think of the "Mediterranean blue" as the typical perfection of colour for sky and sea, but it paled into insignificance by comparison with this perfectly heavenly Pacific colour.
We never tired of looking "forward" at the path of foam which we cut cleanly asunder in those dark-blue depths, throwing it up to either side of us, or of the green feathery bubbles left aft by the revolutions of the screw. I have seen in the afternoon the most lovely little rainbows, just reflected for one minute on the foam of the crest of the wave as it rose up to break away. Then in the evening, after we had entered the tropical latitudes, there was always the phosphorescence on the water, looking like a multitude of glow-worms, appearing and disappearing, and twinkling under the darkness of the ocean. For the first few days out we were followed by flights of gulls and albatross, wheeling and circling around us with their powerful wings, which outstretched measure some four feet across from tip to tip. But after we had come beyond even their range, we were left with nothing to look upon but that wonderful circular line, almost imperceptible, where sea touches sky,—left alone on that vast expanse of water those ten thousand miles of ocean which were to the right hand and to the left of us, which lay down below us in a straight line down, down to the depth of three miles. Then we were made to realize the extraordinary lonely, yet exalted, feeling that comes over you as you raise your eyes to the only boundary, the only limit to the sea—the horizon. Lonely, I say, you must feel because you are the one living thing "that moves upon the face of the Waters," and exalted because you know you are feeling to your inmost soul God's most wonderful creation.
We were a little family collected together from all parts of the earth, thrown together very closely for the time, very soon to be separated and to go each our own way; all travelling on different errands, for different reasons—some for business, some for pleasure, some in search of health, some even in search of love, like the three young ladies we were bringing over