Ethel Gwendoline Vincent
Forty Thousand Miles Over Land and Water
The Journal of a Tour Through the British Empire and America
Published by Good Press, 2021
EAN 4057664575357
Table of Contents
FORTY THOUSAND MILES OVER LAND AND WATER.
CHAPTER I. ACROSS THE ATLANTIC.
CHAPTER II. NEW YORK, HUDSON RIVER, AND NIAGARA FALLS.
CHAPTER III. THE DOMINION OF CANADA.
CHAPTER IV. THE AMERICAN LAKES, AND THE CENTRES OF LEARNING, FASHION, AND GOVERNMENT.
CHAPTER VI. SAN FRANCISCO AND THE YOSEMITE VALLEY.
CHAPTER VII. ACROSS THE PACIFIC.
CHAPTER VIII. COACHING THROUGH THE NORTH ISLAND OF NEW ZEALAND; ITS HOT LAKES AND GEYSERS.
CHAPTER IX. THE SOUTH ISLAND OF NEW ZEALAND: ITS ALPS AND MOUNTAIN LAKES.
CHAPTER X. TASMANIA AND VICTORIA.
CHAPTER XI. NEW SOUTH WALES AND QUEENSLAND.
CHAPTER XII. WITHIN THE BARRIER REEF, THROUGH TORRES' STRAITS TO BATAVIA.
CHAPTER XIII. NETHERLANDS INDIA.
CHAPTER XIV. THE STRAITS SETTLEMENTS.
CHAPTER XV. THE METROPOLIS OF INDIA AND ITS HIMALAYAN SANATORIUM.
CHAPTER XVI. THE SHRINES OF THE HINDU FAITH.
CHAPTER XVII. THE SCENES OF THE INDIAN MUTINY.
CHAPTER XVIII. THE CITIES OF THE GREAT MOGUL.
CHAPTER XIX. GWALIOR AND RAJPUTANA.
CHAPTER XX. THE HOME OF THE PARSEES.
CHAPTER XXI. THROUGH EGYPT—HOMEWARDS.
PREFACE.
My husband, during his six years' tenure of the office of Director of Criminal Investigations, took the greatest interest in the Metropolitan and City Police Orphanage.
In taking leave of his young friends he promised to keep for their benefit a record of our travels through the British Empire and America.
I have endeavoured to the best of my power to relieve him of this task.
It is but a simple Journal of what we saw and did.
But if the Police will accept it, as a further proof of our admiration and respect for them as a body, then I feel sure that others who may be kind enough to read it will be lenient towards the shortcomings of a first publication.
ETHEL GWENDOLINE VINCENT.
1, Grosvenor Square, London.
FORTY THOUSAND MILES OVER
LAND AND WATER.
CHAPTER I.
ACROSS THE ATLANTIC.
"That horrible fog-horn!"
Lat. 43° 15´ N., Long. 50° 12´ W. All is intensely quiet. The revolution even of the screw has ceased. We are wrapped in a fog so dense that we feel almost unable to breathe.
We shudder as we look at the white pall drawn closely around us. The decks and rigging are dripping, and everything on board is saturated with moisture. We feel strangely alone. When hark! A discordant screech, a hideous howl belches forth into the still air, to be immediately smothered and lost in the fog. It is the warning cry of the fog-horn.
We are on board the White Star steamer Germanic, in mid-Atlantic, not far off the great ice-banks of Newfoundland.
It was on Wednesday, the 2nd of July, that we left London, and embarked from Liverpool on the 3rd.
I need not describe the previous bustle of preparation, the farewells to be gone through for a long absence of nine months, the little crowd of kind friends who came to see us off at Euston, nor our embarkation and our last view of England.
I remember how dull and gloomy that first evening on board closed in, and how a slight feeling of depression was not absent from us.
The next morning we were anchoring in Queenstown Harbour, and whilst waiting for the arrival of the mails in the afternoon we went by train to Cork.
The mails were on board the Germanic by four o'clock. We weighed anchor, and our voyage to America had commenced. The often advertised quick passages across the Atlantic are only reckoned to and from Queenstown. The sea-sick traveller hardly sees the point of this computation of time, for the coasts of "ould Ireland" are as stormy and of as much account as the remainder of the passage.
And now we have settled down into the usual idle life on board ship, a life where eating and drinking plays the most important