SOME people who have been to the Antipodes and back
will tell you that a voyage to Australia in a good sailing ship is a very pleasant way of spending three months. Seen through the halo of distance it may seem so ; certainly it leaves pleasant and amusing reminiscences behind. But I doubt if one person is twenty on board our excellent ship the Mercia, provided as she was with every comfort, or on board any other ship whatsoever, if cross- examined during the voyage, would have persisted that he was- thoroughly enjoying it. From the first, one noticed a resigned rather than a cheerful look among the passengers. Even those who at starting were loudest in their praises of a sea life spoke in the same breath of finding means, and very slender means they seem, of relieving its tedium and monotony.
We left Plymouth in the fag end of a gale. The second dap,
just about the place where the London is supposed to have gone down, a large piece of timber was floating high out of the wate3. We passed within twenty yards of it, and I then saw it was the keel of a vessel, of three or four hundred tons, capsized, and drift- ing bottom upwards. There was still a good deal of swell, and it would have been dangerous as well as useless to lower a boat ;
we passed it almost in silence, and in a few minutes it was out of sight astern.
For a week or so the cuddy, and even the poop, were almost
deserted. By degrees the population emerged from their cabins like rabbits from their burrows, to the number of forty or more, so that there was scarcely room to sit at table. Most of the passengers are Australians, "old chums," who have crossed theLinemore than once, and are going back, either because the east winds of the old country last too long and are too keen after an Australian sun ; or because they have come to an end of their holiday. Even among second and third-class passengers this is so, for the attraction homewards, is still strong, and it is common enough, it seems, for clerks and persons holding mercantile situations to get a year's leave to go• home. One or two brides there are, not yet Australian, and some
half-dozen English, most of them more or less invalids, taking the
voyage for pure sea air's sake, and hoping by following the sun' across the Line to enjoy three summers in succession. Six chil- dren and a nurse abide in one stern cabin ; the other has been fitted up luxuriously and artistically with cushions, pictures, and. loaded book-shelves, by a man who intends to. pass the time in literary retirement in the bosom of his family. Alas ! in the stern there is motion on the calmest day. Not an hour is it possible bo, write or read there without experiencing certain premonitory symptoms necessitating an adjournment to the fresh air on deck. It is almost impossible to be alone or to be industrious on board ship. In the tropics exertion of body or mind is almost impossible ; your limbs refuse to move, your eyes to see, and your brains.to
think. The deck is strewn all day with slumbering forms. No plank, no hen-coop redolent of unpleasant odours, is so hard as to repel sleep. Nor is there often any excitement to arouse us. It is geld= that a sail is seen, for the course of the homeward is far distant from that of the outward bound. Twice only throughout the voyage is land seen, the rough jagged outline of Madeira and the Desertas, rising from a smooth sheet of blue and purple water, and standing out against the glowing colours of the setting sun ; and a few days later Palma, hiding the Peak of Teneriffe. We hope in vain to see Trinidad and Tristan de Cunha. There are two months in which the horizon is straight with a straightness abhorred on land by nature, such as even the deserts of Africa do not afford. Can it be that so much of the globe is always to be a dreary waste of waters? Is it all needed to make wind and rain, and to be a purifier of the land ? or when earth is overpeopled, will a new creation spring out of the sea ? At any rate, there is change of some kind going on. We are unpleasantly made aware of this by a sudden cessation of wind, with calms, squalls, and foul wind, off the Canaries, in what should be the very heart of the Trade winds,—the Trades, whose blast used to be as steady and uniform as the course of the sun itself. A great change has occurred, says the Captain ruefully, even in his time (and he is not forty), in their regularity. If they go on at this rate, there may be none at all in a century, and not Maury himself can foresee the consequences of that.
On the other hand, the luck is with us when we come to the much dreaded belt of calms, which lies near the Equator, shifting north and south of it, accoriling to the time of year, but always more to the north than to the south of it. Often are ships de- tained there for days, and even weeks, drenched in tropical rain, which makes it necessary to keep the skylights shut, to the great discomfort of every one, except the ducks and geese, which are for the only time during the voyage released from their narrow coops, and put in possession of unlimited water and free range of the poop. For two or three weeks my thermometer stands at from 80° to 84°, not varying perceptibly day or night. In the upper-deck cabins there is plenty of ventilation—you may make them a race-course of draughts—but below it is intolerable. It is unsafe to sleep on deck at night, for the air is charged with moisture. Portmanteaux, bags, hats, coats, and boots cover them- selves with furry coats of green and blue mould. It is not unhealthy, but it is enervating and wearisome, except for five minutes soon after sunrise, when in the intervals of washing the decks the hose is turned upon you, as you stand thinking the warm air clothing enough. There is not much to look at but the flying fish, as they rise in flocks, frightened, from under the ship's bows, and tumble in again with a splash a hundred yards off ; and at night the brilliant phosphorescence which shines in the white foam in the vessel's wake. For two days amongst the Madeiras turtles floated by asleep, but they were too wary to be caught.
It was a relief when one day, south of Trinidad, the air grew suddenly cooler, the flying fish disappeared, and the first Cape pigeon, and the first albatross, then Cape geese, Cape hens, and I know not what other birds, gave us hope that our voyage was half over, and that in ten days we should be in the longitude of the Cape. From hence till land was sighted some of these birds were always in sight of the ship. Sometimes four or five albatrosses at once were swooping about astern, some of them showing marks of having been struck with shot. It was useless to shoot at them, for they would have been lost ; but we caught two with baited hooks, one measuring nine feet from wing to wing, and, unmindful of the " Ancient Mariner," slew and stuffed them.
I paid my footing on the forecastle, in hopes of seeing something of the crew. But one is apt to be in the way there, and it is diffi- cult to see much of the sailors. With the officers it is different. Nothing can exceed their patience in listening to anything, reasonable or unreonable, which the passengers have to say or to complain of, and in answering any questions, sensible or foolish. It is a hard life-for them, requiring nerve, temper, and power of endurance, for like most English gentlemen they are ever ready to work hard with their hands as well as with their heads ; and as a ship often has only two responsible officers, each has at least half of every night for his watch on deck (in all weathers, be it remembered), in addition to the work of the day. Yet for this a. chief officer gets the miserable pittance of 71., and a second mate and a doctor (as hard-worked a man as either) 51. a month, sometimes even less, ceasing immediately at the end of the voyage. One could wish that the great shipowners, wealthy as they must be; were a little more liberal in this respect. The butcher, on the
other hand, is a man of capital, and comes furnished with a crowd of bull-dogs, canary-birds, thrushes, and other animals, which bring him in a handsome profit at the end of the voyage.
It is well if a voyage passes without quarrels. In such close quarters, one must be inoffensive indeed to offend nobody. If you are cordial friends with the fat unwashed man who has sat next you at three meals every day for three months, and with a loud voice insisted on being helped first to everything, your disposition must be amiable indeed. Except the relation between the two Lord Justices of the Court of Chancery, compared with which the bond of matrimony itself is a trifle, I know none so trying as close juxtaposition on board ship. You are at the mercy of the noisiest, the least scrupulous, and the most officious. If a man drinks, he will drink twice as much at sea, where he has nothing else to do. However, eating, sleeping, or talking, we are always going ; that is the great satisfaction. The average daily run greatly increases as we get south. Between 40° and 45° south latitude there are no more light or foul winds for a ship sailing east, and the course is straight, at the rate of 250 knots a day. But it gets colder and colder, till one day the wind changes from north to south, and we experience what it is to have a temperature of 40°, or lower. Snow and hail falling, draughts as usual, and no possibility of a fire. Often it blows half a gale ; you cannot walk the deck to warm your feet, but must hold on fast, and take your chance of a drenching from one of the heavy seas, which from time to time strike the ship abeam or on the quarter, with a noise like a ten- pound shot out of a gun. The air gets drier ; we are getting into the Australian climate. At last the day comes for sighting land. For an hour or more it is doubtful, then certain, that land is in sight. I pat the day down as a red-letter day in my life, as we pass within a mile or two of Cape 0 tway, and see the red sandy cliffs, the pale green grass close to the water's edge, the lighthouse and telegraph station above, and behind, the ranges of thick impene- trable bush, huge forest trees, with their dark foliage standing out against the sky, a landscape as wild and unsullied by the hand of man as though it were a thousand miles from a settlement. One longs to be landed there and then, but the breeze is fair and strong, and though at sunset we take in all sail but topsails, we rush on, and are forced to heave to before midnight, pitching and rolling in the swell, lest we get beyond Port Philip Heads in the night. Soon after midnight all are astir, for there is a rumour that the pilot is coming. From the deck a large star near the horizon is to be seen, and an indistinct dark object underneath it. It moves, gets larger, the moon's rays fall upon it, and shining white as silver, a little schooner with a light at her mast head shoots under the stern. The pilot climbs on board. Three more hours pitch- ing, and the long low Heads are left astern of us, and we are in smooth water. As the Melbourne folk are sitting down to their Sunday's breakfast, and you in England are going to bed for your Saturday night's rest, our anchor drops in Hobson's Bay, a quarter of a mile from the long, low, sandy coast. Fronting us is Sand- ridge, the port of Melbourne ; to the right, as far as the eye can see, dark green foliage, broken by clusters of houses and bare spaces of sand ; and to the left, a marshy, sandy plain, bounded by the distant ranges, purple as the hills of Gascony or the Campagna.
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