Part 20

The run up the coast from Ceylon past the French settlement of Pondicherry, where the French steamers touch, to Madras, 614 miles to the northward, is smooth sailing if the monsoon months of April, June, November, and December be avoided. A day in port is sufficient for landing the cargo, brought off in lighters manned by stalwart lascars, naked except for the narrowest of breech-clouts and the most enormous of turbans. The traveller, while at Madras, should see the Indian jugglers, and to do this comfortably, should make arrangements to have the exhibition held on board ship. Two or three natives, sitting on the open deck at his feet, place a mango-stone with a handful of dirt under an old cotton sheet, which, after talking gibberish, they remove, disclosing a small green sprout about 8 inches high. “Big mango?” is then inquired by the head juggler; “big mango?” Receiving assent, the twig is carefully recovered and incantations follow, while the jugglers slowly raise the centre of the sheet higher and higher, until finally, on removing it, there stands a mango-bush 5 feet high, bearing fruit which the juggler will pick and distribute. The trick is worth the $10 it has cost.

From Madras to Calcutta the distance is 770 miles. The most interesting feature of the journey is the difficult navigation of the Hoogly, or Calcutta River, under the direction of the skilful pilots; each of whom brings his own leadsman on board, sometimes two of them, and his own native servant, so as to be quite independent of the ship and her crew.

The river front of Calcutta is one long wharf with vessels moored in columns of twos, threes, and fours for a couple of miles. The steamer traffic is large, nearly 1,000 foreign ships coming and going within a year, and as many coasting steamers. The import trade is principally in cotton goods, metals, and malt liquors; the exports are borax, rice, opium, gums, gunny-cloth, etc.

From Calcutta several short sea routes may be taken to strange countries: the British India ships go to Rangoon, in Burmah, and then down the Malay Peninsula to Penang, one of the Strait Settlements. Penang is on the road from Ceylon to Singapore, and some of the great liners stop for a couple of hours to take in a mail, some tin, and a few spices. The harbor is one of singular beauty, but not otherwise of much interest to the traveller, hurrying on through the picturesque Straits of Malacca to Singapore.

Singapore is the half-way house on the great highway between India and China, where all ships, large and small, stop. Its position is a most important one, not only as a large coaling and docking station, but to a greater extent as an immense entrepôt for goods, the trade being largely one of transit. The shipping business done is enormous; the docks and streets are full of bustle and activity, of hurrying, running, hard-working Chinese, Javanese, Moluccans, and Europeans, unmindful of a temperature averaging 86° Fahrenheit.

This town of such activity and go lies almost under the equator, in latitude 1° 17´ north; its longitude is nearly 104° east; just 12 hours and 9 minutes ahead of New York, from which city it is separated by 12,000 miles of water, requiring about 43 days of ocean navigation.

Singapore has steam communication with 152 different ports, far and near. During the year, 3,600 foreign ships enter the harbor, and nearly the same number clear, representing a shipping movement of over 5,500,000 tons. The regular liners make connection at Singapore with the Netherland-India Steamship Company—“De Nederlandsch-Indische Stoomvaart Maatschappij”—an efficient organization with headquarters at Batavia, Java. Some of the by-ways of travel over which the tourist can agreeably saunter by means of the 30 or more good steamers of this company lead to all the ports on the coasts of the islands of Java, Sumatra, and Borneo, to the Moluccas, Philippines, Celebes, and so back to Singapore, where the traveller boards the steamer bound for Hong-Kong.

The mail, and other full-powered steamships, leaving Singapore for the northward, head straight up the China Sea for Hong-Kong, 1,435 miles away. During this run of 6 days the most learned discussions are held concerning the weather. Typhoons are most prevalent from July to December; from December to May they seldom happen, still they have been known to occur in every month of the year. The September equinox is a very precarious period; therefore, if the tourist is anxious to make sure of smooth weather, he should time his voyaging so as to be in these waters in early June, when the southwest monsoon is lightest. But this brings the ship to Hong-Kong at the beginning of the warm weather and rainy season, whereas the months of December and January are the most delightful, the mean temperature being 65° F.

In the wet or damp season the traveller must keep watch of his clothes, books, shoes, etc., or they will get injured by mildew. This supervision of one’s effects is necessary throughout the entire voyage around India, the dew at night being penetrating and saturating. Two serviceable suits of flannel should be taken to be worn alternately, so that one suit can be drying. Leather shoes, particularly blacked boots, are damaged by the mould that forms on them when exposed; the proper foot-gear is the canvas shoe with rubber sole.

Hong-Kong is attractive because of the high peak, 2,000 feet above the water, the forts half-way down the mountain’s side, and the city built on the long easy slope running into the capacious bay, where the wharfs, docks, mooring-buoys, and the like give unmistakable evidences of the maritime importance of the place. The men at the clubs on shore, both English and German, will tell the traveller that Hong-Kong ranks as the fourth port in the world in the amount of shipping that annually passes through its waters: a few years ago this was estimated to be above 12,000,000 tons, which, if correct, would give Hong-Kong nearly as much as New York.

Should the traveller desire to visit China and Japan, he must disembark at Hong-Kong. This he will do regretfully, for he has become attached to his ship, her officers, and his messmates. He has been well and courteously treated throughout a long and at times tedious voyage, during which everything has been done to make him comfortable and contented. Really, the main differences existing between the steamers of the different companies are those of route and time. For instance, the P. & O. lands the passenger at Hong-Kong, 44 days from London, via Gibraltar, Malta, the Canal, Bombay, Colombo, and Singapore, a total distance of 9,800 miles. At every main port touched en route, no matter by what line, at least 6 hours, oftener 12 or 24 hours, can be had on shore in which to see the place, and there are no annoyances or vexations as to custom-house duties or inspections. The M. M. line, which departs from Marseilles, touches at Naples, and reaches Hong-Kong via the Canal, Aden, Colombo, Singapore, and Saigon, goes over 8,160 miles of water in 36 days. The German mail, leaving Bremen and Antwerp and going by way of the Canal via Colombo and Singapore, traverses 10,223 miles in 43 days. The Austrian Lloyd, from Trieste via Bombay, makes port in 50 days, after a journey of 8,345 miles.

To visit Canton the steamboat should be taken that leaves Hong-Kong daily. The trip of 7 hours’ duration will be enlivened by the noisy Chinese passengers on board, and by the numerous Chinese junks constantly passed as they are going up and down the river under sails and oars. The traveller will also encounter some Europeans, who will gladly tell him good stories and put him up at their snug little club-house on the Shameen, the island connected with Canton, where the white population resides. Canton should be seen; it is a typical Chinese city into which modern civilization has made no visible headway.

Returning to Hong-Kong, the water-front offers much that is attractive. Thousands of junks lie in rows, anchored off the harbor, and thousands more are moored along the sea-wall; the noise made by the crews of these boats, beating gongs, firing crackers, singing, shouting, and burning papers and joss-sticks to their favorite Buddhas, is pandemonium. On shore coolies trot about in couples, with long bamboo-poles on their shoulders, transporting chests of tea, silk, matting, etc., from the junks to the big storehouses and from the storehouses to the lighters to be towed alongside the steamers, where the bales are hoisted into the holds.

At this port the traveller will find a newly organized transpacific service, running by way of Yokohama to Vancouver, where connection is made with the Canadian Pacific Railway to Quebec and Halifax, and thence to London. The line, as at present formed, consists of three magnificent steamers, sailing monthly. The Empress of India, the pioneer of the line, made the voyage early in 1891 from Yokohama to Vancouver in the unprecedented time of 10 days and 15 hours.

Observing the steamers closely, the traveller will discover that one of them is flying a different flag from those he has been accustomed to see while on the journey along the great Indian Ocean highway: the stars-and-stripes belong to one of the vessels of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company of the United States.

The Pacific Mail Steamship Company was organized in 1847, at the time of the colonization of the Pacific States, and gained notoriety by despatching one of its first vessels, the California, from New York, in 1848, to San Francisco by way of Cape Horn. The successful termination of this extraordinary performance, in those early days of steam navigation, enabled the company to inaugurate a steamship service between Panama and San Francisco. The route thus opened was from New York to Colon (Aspinwall), and thence across the Isthmus to Panama, where the steamer was in waiting to run up the Mexican coast to California. The transpacific route was commenced in 1867, soon after the opening of the Pacific Railroad, and is now worked in conjunction with an English line, the Oriental & Occidental.

The traveller bound from Hong-Kong for Yokohama can take either the Canadian Pacific steamers or the Pacific Mail. If, however, he is anxious to see the ports of China and Japan before entering on the great thoroughfare of the Pacific Ocean, he has at his choice several efficient lines of local and coasting steamers, that will bear him safely to the different treaty ports and afford him all the time he will require for sight-seeing.

Most of the European mail lines go to Shanghai, and the coasting lines of both China and Japan make it a stopping-place. Shanghai is worth a visit because of the different European ways of living in China. The city is composed of sections where each nation has established its own settlement, contiguous to, but quite distinct from, that of any other nation. There is an American town, an English town, a French town, a German town, and a Chinese town, each preserving its own language and society, and as far as possible its own architecture.

The Mitsu Bishe line of steamers, the Nippon Yusen, and two or three others, ply between the ports of Japan along the really beautiful inland passage, and up the Japan Sea. If one be interested in Japanese ceramics, swords, armor, and antiquities, he should take this way trip; eventually bringing up at Yokohama, whence a railway ride of an hour will land him in Tokio.

At Yokohama passage is secured for San Francisco, 5,000 miles to the eastward, across the broadest part of the Pacific Ocean. This route is one of the longest direct lines between two places that is steamed over by the ships of any company. It is a dull and monotonous voyage; nothing but blue water for 18 days, no land is seen, no strange sail sighted, rarely even do gales of wind blow hard enough to make things lively. The cabin passengers are principally Americans returning to their native land, a few Englishmen making the round of the world, a couple of Australians full of talk of the greatness of their own country and sceptical as to the advance and improvement of any other; some Japanese, curious, polite, intelligent; one or two rich Chinamen who keep to themselves, and a sprinkling of other nationalities. This heterogeneous crowd gets on well together, plays cards, makes pools on each day’s run, discusses the 180th meridian question, as to why the week is one day longer than seven, jokes, laughs, reads, smokes, and drinks.

The steerage passengers are mostly Chinamen returning to California after a visit home. Special accommodations are fitted for them. Not infrequently the Chinese in large numbers take passage on the Pacific Mail to be landed at Honolulu. This will give the traveller a day in port, when he should go on shore to enjoy Sandwich Island hospitality, and see the Hoola-hoola—a native dance that must be prearranged and paid for, since it is interdicted by the Government because of its supposed demoralizing influence—on the native. After a voyage of 2,000 miles in 7 days to the northeast, the steamer enters the Golden Gate, and passes up to the city of San Francisco. A six-day run by railroad, and the traveller is once again back in New York.

The whole distance travelled by the way described is, in round numbers, 23,000 miles, and the time taken to do this may have been but 80 or 90 days, or more; the longer the better, for it requires plenty of time to enjoy a trip around the world. It also requires money. About $1,000 would be necessary for passage money alone; double this amount would be sufficient to take the traveller in comfort and ease, and upon his arrival home he would consider it money admirably spent.

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The traveller reaching San Francisco by the above highway of circumnavigation can further add to his knowledge of strange countries by selecting a sea journey to New York, instead of a land run by railroad across the continent. To go by sea passage must be secured on board a Pacific Mail coasting steamer, the only line running to Mexico, Central America, and Panama. Steaming down the beautiful coast of California, stopping at picturesque harbors in Mexico, anchoring off roadsteads of Central America, taking on and off a few passengers, an Englishman, a German, an American, handling cargo—such is the rough log of the cruise of 20 days and 3,200 miles until the splendid Bay of Panama is reached. The eight or ten ports of call are better seen from the ship than from the shore. The enchantment of distance gives way upon close examination to pity and disgust, for dirt, indigence, and a total ignorance of how to live decently are noticeable everywhere.

At Panama two widely different routes leading to the United States are offered: the one goes over the Isthmus of Panama by rail and thence to New York by sea; the other stretches away down the west coast of South America, through the Straits of Magellan, and up the Atlantic highway.

By the first route the railway journey over the 45 miles of land separating the Pacific from the Atlantic Ocean, crosses, recrosses, and runs beside the deserted canal, affording ocular proof of the failure of the scheme. At both Panama and Colon the same appearance of being left is noticeable. The business of the two ports is one of transit only, but is sufficiently great to furnish employment to some thousands of Americans and Jamaicans.

Nearly a dozen steamship lines leave Colon for ports in the United States, Europe, the West Indies, and the neighboring coasts, and by one or two of them the traveller can run up to Greytown, where he will have an opportunity to see the Nicaraguan Canal. This canal, when completed, will make important changes in existing routes between the United States and Europe at one end of the line, and the west coast of the American Continent, China, Japan, and Australasia at the other. For instance, the route from London to Sydney is 12,500 miles, via the Suez Canal; by the Nicaraguan Canal the distance will be less than 12,000 miles. And if the lengths of the routes from the Atlantic seaboards to the Pacific seaboards, both east and west, be compared with those now followed, the great saving by the Nicaraguan gateway becomes still more apparent. Returning to Colon, the traveller boards the north-bound steamer, and lands in New York, 2,000 miles distant, in 8 days.

It may be, however, that the traveller decides upon proceeding by the second route, leading from Panama to New York. If so, he books on board a steamer belonging to the Pacific Steam Navigation Company of England, a powerful organization having the contract for carrying the mails, and controlling almost exclusively the Isthmian trade to and from South America. The ships of the Company run into all the ports of consequence on the west coast, and the lines extend from Valparaiso by way of Magellan Straits to the river Plate and Brazil ports, and thence to Lisbon and England. An important point for consideration in connection with this southern trip is the probability of there being a revolution in progress in some of the countries to be visited, which might interfere with going on shore.

At length the steamer leaves Panama, and the passenger for the United States begins his long journey. His companions are very few, South Americans, principally, bound for ports along the coast, so he is left to his own resources. He can read, and lounge, and make good friends with the officers of the ship, who are Englishmen. At night he can stretch out in his steamer chair and dream away the warm hours gazing at the “majestical roof fretted with golden fire.”

From Panama to Valparaiso, some 3,100 miles, 25 ports are touched at, which, Callao excepted, are of no special interest. Callao, the seaport of Peru, is in itself unattractive, the town and the people are dirty; the empty docks, the lazy inhabitants, the atmosphere of _laissez aller_, confirm the opinion that the place and all around it have had their day. From Callao the traveller should go to Lima, 7 miles distant by rail, and take the Oroya Railway to the top of the Andes, 15,000 feet above the sea-level: the wonderful engineering ability displayed in constructing this road will prove quite as impressive as the truly magnificent mountain scenery. Two days will suffice to make the excursion and bring him back to Lima, an old Spanish city with many interesting corners. The cathedral should be visited; in the crypt lie the bones of the great Pizarro. A dirty Cholo shows them. Reverently pulling aside a ragged curtain from before a dingy stone bench, he exclaims, “Behold the bones of Francisco Pizarro!” Their state of perfect preservation and symmetry of arrangement might incline one to doubt the truth of the statement.

Leaving Callao, en route for Valparaiso, the steamer makes several ports; some of them interesting because of the recent war operations, but otherwise they had better be viewed from the ship’s deck, for the same low adobe dwellings and squalid existence characterize them all. After 11 days of pleasant weather Valparaiso is reached. Valparaiso is built on several hill slopes running to the water from a high ridge back of the city. It is a place of great activity; the docks are piled high with freight, the people move about with spirit, the harbor is full of ships, and there is that general air which betokens financial soundness and commercial prosperity. The streets are noticeably clean, the buildings are of good architecture, the stores are inviting, and the frequently recurring signs in English, French, and German, and the people met, are indicative of the cosmopolitan nature of the inhabitants.

The Bay of Valparaiso is open to the northward, from which point the heavy gales blow, raising a long rolling sea that works considerable damage to shipping. Steamers weigh and stand out when these blows come on.

Valparaiso has connection, via Magellan Straits, with Montevideo, 2,750 miles distant, by means of four or five lines of good steamships. The P. S. N.—as the Pacific Steam Navigation Company is called—runs vessels over this route. So do the Cosmos and Hamburg Companies, German lines; there are besides French and Italian lines.

Since leaving Panama, 21 days ago, the weather along the Pacific highway has been uniformly pleasant—for northers are infrequent—the breezes have been light and warm from the southward, the sea long and smooth, and the ship seldom out of sight of the bare sandy hills running along the shore, or the towering Andes stretching away in the background. To the south from Valparaiso, however, this changes. It grows colder, the sea gets rougher, and by the time the Gulf of Peñas, the entrance to the inside passage, is reached, the chances are it will be thick and unsettled, with every prospect of a foul gale. When the storm breaks it is tremendous; in no other part of the world do winds blow harder or seas rise higher; lofty ships carry low sails hereabouts, and steamers frequently have to lie to.

The mad ocean is left astern when the ship enters the inside passage leading along the coast of Patagonia and the Straits of Magellan. Here the scene is one of unparalleled magnificence. High bare walls of stone, towering barren cliffs, lofty snow-capped peaks, weather-scarred mountains down whose furrowed sides extend steel-blue glaciers—all reveal nature in her most majestic and awe-inspiring form.

From Sandy Point, a small settlement midway in the strait, where coal can be obtained, to Cape Virgins, 150 miles beyond, the lay of the land is less varied and attractive. At the Cape the ship enters on the tempestuous Atlantic highway, and heads northward for Montevideo, 1,300 miles away. Five days later the anchor is let go about 3 miles off the city. The traveller must remember, when going on shore at Montevideo, that pamperos blow frequently, raising a nasty cross-sea which makes boating very uncertain. Several well-known lines of foreign vessels make Montevideo a port of call; among them the Messageries Maritimes; the North German Lloyds, the Austro-Hungarian Lloyds, and the Italian Mail. Of the many other lines, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Brazilian, to be seen in the harbor, none is of more importance than the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, of Southampton. In 1842 this steamship company was the first that carried mails to the West Indies from Europe. It began the Brazilian and River Plate (Rio de la Plata) mail service in 1850. To-day its routes include the West India Islands, Mexico, and Central and South America.

The regular liners to Montevideo, and the several local and coasting steamers, come to off Buenos Ayres, 100 miles to the southeastward. The extensive harbor works, for the purpose of making the city a deep-water port, at once excite admiration. Both Montevideo and Buenos Ayres are attractive cities of regular streets, many substantial houses, public buildings with Italian marble façades, Spanish cathedrals, and extensive suburbs of handsome residences surrounded by beautiful gardens. The mean temperature of the two places, 63°, corresponds with that of Palermo and Rome. The business of Montevideo is good, the imports of merchandise, machinery, and manufactured articles exceeding $22,000,000, and the exports of hides, horns, wool, and beef being valued at $15,000,000. The trade of Buenos Ayres is much larger, the imports being valued at $88,000,000, the exports at $65,000,000.