Part 1

Transcriber’s Note: Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.

[Illustration: E. W. HOWE]

Travel Letters _from_ New Zealand Australia AND Africa By E. W. HOWE

[Illustration] CRANE & COMPANY, TOPEKA, KANSAS

Copyright 1913 By Crane & Company Topeka

TRAVEL LETTERS _from_ NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA

TRAVEL LETTERS FROM NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 4, 1913.—This is written in the Pacific ocean, on the ship “Sonoma,” two days out of Sydney, Australia, where we expect to land next Monday. We have been on the ship seventeen days, and the passengers and servants seem as familiar as people with whom we have associated many years. In the main, we have had a pleasant voyage, although the weather was somewhat boisterous the first few days out of San Francisco. We stopped eight hours at Honolulu, and five hours at Pago Pago, in the Samoa Islands. There was an elaborate celebration on board on Christmas day, which included a big dinner, speeches, and a dance, and we also had a similar New Year celebration, although we actually had no New Year’s day. At a late hour on the 31st of December we crossed the 180th meridian, and, when we awoke the following morning, the date was January 2, 1913. Ships sailing westward drop a day on crossing the 180th meridian, and ships going eastward add a day. In traveling toward the sun, the day increases in length, and, in a trip around the world, this increase amounts to exactly twenty-four hours. Every day we set our watches back from twenty to thirty minutes, and when we reach Canton, Ohio, on our return, this daily increase in the day’s length will have amounted to the day we dropped. In traveling eastward, you set your watch forward every day, and, on completion of your journey around the world, you will have gained a day.... Few young people travel; only the old or middle-aged seem able to afford it, while only the young are able to enjoy it. Adelaide, my niece, is the only youngster on the ship, and, although she never saw the sea until this trip, she is thoroughly enjoying it. She was ill in a quiet, ladylike way two or three days, but now she has forgotten all about the motion, and dreads to leave the “Sonoma” at Sydney. The stewardess calls her “dear,” but invariably refers to me as “Mr. Works.” I am trying to get even by inventing a new name for the stewardess every time I speak to her. Her name is Mrs. Coombs, but I began by calling her Mrs. Ashton, and followed it with Mrs. Bullard, Mrs. Comstock, Mrs. Davis, Mrs. Everett, and on down the alphabet until I now call her Mrs. Wheeler. James, the room steward, and George, our dining-room steward, know my name, but to the stewardess I am always Mr. Works. She is an American, but most of the crew are English, or Australians, outside the captain and his chief officers. It is ship gossip that the first officer is a very able man, but so ill-natured that he has never been given a ship, although an older man than the captain. It is important to understand your trade, but if you hope to get into fast company, you must also be polite.

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Among the passengers is a life insurance man named Adams, en route to Australia to protest because of unfriendly legislation. His wife has been seasick almost continuously, and the women say he keeps her sick because of too much kindness: that the moment she gets a little better, he stuffs her with unsuitable food, and thus brings on another spell. He has heard somewhere that champagne is good for seasickness, and keeps her full half the time. But however mistaken he may be in his treatment, he is certainly an attentive husband, and the men are proud of him. It is a beautiful sight to see this good husband modestly taking the air on deck, after devoting hours to his sick wife. His duty is to his wife, and he does not seem to care for other people. The women take turns in going down to sit with his wife. It was Adelaide’s turn this afternoon, and the good husband walked awhile with me on deck. He says that a good many years ago there was a demand from total abstainers that they be given a better life-insurance rate than smokers and patrons of barrooms. The rate was granted, but, after long experience, the experts of the Equitable and Mutual life companies found that the death-rate among total abstainers was slightly greater than the average death-rate among all classes.

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Another interesting passenger as far as Honolulu was the manager of a sugar plantation who receives $18,000 a year salary. He spent several years in Porto Rico and in the Hawaiian Islands, but is now opening a plantation in Mexico. He frequently has two thousand employees, and, as they are constantly scheming to get the best of him, he delights in scheming to get the best of them. He told me he had been marked for assassination several times, but had always heard of it. He finds that when any body of men engage in a disreputable transaction, several of them are always anxious to turn informers, and secure a reward. An informer nearly always asks a thousand dollars, but he will usually compromise, and take two hundred. If you engage in any kind of dirty work, remember that some one will know about it, and sell you out.... The sugar man says that reliable Mexicans tell him that during the thirty-two years Diaz was president of Mexico, he ordered forty thousand men shot, and that he didn’t make a mistake in a single case.

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The “Sonoma” is a ten-thousand-ton ship, and has been in the Australian trade only a few months since it was rebuilt last winter. It ran between San Francisco and Sydney several years ago, but the owners claimed the business did not pay, so the three ships in the line lay in San Francisco bay a long time. Then the owners decided to try it again, and the ships were rebuilt, and fitted with oil-burners. This is the fifth voyage of the “Sonoma” since the owners changed their minds. A good deal of the trade has been lost, and the employees are very polite, with a view of recovering the lost business. We have enough fuel oil on board to run the ship to Sydney and back to Honolulu. We all like the ship, except that it is a great roller. The other night, while the passengers were at dinner, a big roll sent the dishes and food into heaps on the floor, and those on deck were shot against the rail with great force.

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Captain Trask is a very pleasant man, and most of the passengers know him. Some captains, particularly those on the Atlantic, see very little of the passengers, but on the Pacific, captains have little to do, and are more genial. On the Atlantic, there is always something for captains to do. Ships are seen frequently, and if it isn’t ships, it is fog. But the Pacific is very lonely; a ship is rarely seen here, although we have seen one on this voyage: the “Ventura,” the sister ship of the “Sonoma.” We met the “Ventura” on Christmas day, two days out of Honolulu, but it went by like a race-horse, and we saw little of it.... Adelaide sits on Captain Trask’s left, a lady with a maid having secured the coveted place on his right. He likes to talk, and we are already in possession of many of his reminiscences. He learned his trade as most Americans do—from the ground up, and went to sea as a common sailor when fifteen years old. By degrees he learned the technical side of his trade, and has been around the world many times in sailing-ships. He is a big fellow, and I imagine he has quelled many a mutiny with his fists. Occasionally, early in the morning, I catch him punching the bag on deck, and no other man on board is equally expert at it. Not long ago, the crew of the “Sonoma” mutinied at Sydney, in trying to enforce some rule of the union, and he landed sixty-two of them in jail. He took the ship back to San Francisco with a new and inexperienced crew, and reached port on time. He is very good-natured now, but I imagine that, on occasion, he would be real rough, and I shall behave myself while on board.... Poets love to use the expression, “As true as the needle to the pole,” but Captain Trask says the needle is not true to the pole, and does not point toward it. It isn’t the pole that attracts the needle of the compass, but the Magnetic North. A good many degrees west of the pole there is a great magnetic mountain, and this, and not the pole, attracts the needle by which mariners guide their ships. The pole has no attraction whatever for the needle of the compass.

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Stories told by the captain at dinner: In Australia there once lived a very rich and very eccentric old bachelor. A certain old maid was very anxious to capture him, and pursued him so steadily that there was considerable talk among the neighbors. On one occasion the old bachelor gave a reception at his home, and the old maid was one of the guests. During the evening, the old bachelor invited the old maid to walk on the terrace. She thought he was about to propose.

“You have a beautiful place here,” she said to him, as they walked about in the moonlight.

“Yes,” he said, “yet it lacks one thing. But for that, I would be a very fortunate and happy man.”

The old maid thought she had him; that he could mean but one thing: the refining influence of a wife.

“And what is that?” she asked, coyly.

“Water,” the old bachelor replied.

Australia is a very dry country, and the average Australian longs for water as you long for money.... The captain says dogs never do well at sea; that they soon get fits, and die. In order to have good health, a dog must have grass to eat. But cats do well at sea. When the captain was master of a sailing vessel, he owned a cat which made three voyages around the world with him. He tells of the smart tricks of this cat as you tell of the smart tricks of your dog. While his ship was once tied up at the London docks, the cat was prowling around other vessels, and one of them carried it three miles away, to another loading-dock. The crew mourned the cat as dead, but one day he turned up: he had found his way back to the ship through three miles of London’s streets.... The captain says there is nothing in the story that rats will desert a sinking ship; he never knew a ship to go down that was not full of rats. In the Indian ocean he once came across an abandoned ship, and went aboard of it. He found the deck covered with rats that had starved to death. He tried to burn the ship, as it was a menace to navigation, but failed. Six months later, two thousand miles away, he ran across the same dangerous, drifting hulk. This time he succeeded in burning it.... Captain Trask says that in the old days of wooden sailing-ships the rats frequently gnawed holes in the bottom, in seeking water. They could hear the rush of water outside, and, not knowing it was salt water, worked toward it. When a ship was known to be full of rats, they were watered regularly, to prevent their sinking it.

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Captain Trask says that on one of his voyages in a sailing-ship, he was in company every day with another vessel forty-seven days. The ships were of about equal size, and bound in the same direction. On another occasion, he left New York with a cargo of wheat, bound for Liverpool. Another sailing-ship went out of the harbor at the same time, bound also for Liverpool. They did not sight each other during the entire voyage, but arrived at Liverpool at almost the same hour.... The captain says that after a sailor has been ashore a few weeks, he finds the first part of a voyage very irksome, but after that he doesn’t care; he has spent six weeks beating around Cape Horn without minding it much. Frequently a bad wind will undo all that has been accomplished in weeks of hard work. But that is part of the game, and sailors usually take it philosophically.... But a story is told of one captain who fought two months to round Cape Horn, where the current and the wind flow in a south-easterly direction three hundred days of the year. He was finally compelled to put back to Buenos Aires for provisions. Again he struggled for two months without rounding the cape, and again he put back to Buenos Aires for provisions; but while lying in the harbor, he killed himself. Thereupon the first officer took command, and rounded the Cape without the loss of an unnecessary day, the wind and current being favorable for the first time in months.

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At two o’clock one afternoon, Old Neptune came aboard the “Sonoma,” the ship having crossed the equator early in the morning. Neptune was dressed in a fantastic way, and followed by a numerous train, including his wife, several policemen, a physician, a barber, etc. A recorder read a long proclamation, and the passengers took pictures. It had been rumored that all those who had not crossed the line before, and could not produce a certificate showing they had been across, would be shaved with a wooden razor, and ducked in the swimming-tank. There was a good deal of nervousness among the passengers, but it turned out that the ceremony only referred to new members of the crew. About a dozen of these were operated on, greatly to the amusement of the passengers gathered on the upper deck. A platform had been erected beside the swimming-tank, and the victims were seated on this, one by one. First they were examined by the doctor, and given a huge pill. Then they were lathered with a paste made of flour and water, and shaved with a huge wooden razor. This being completed, the victim was thrown into the tank, and ducked. Sometimes the victim fought, and this caused great amusement. One of the passengers, a young athlete, went through the ceremony, to amuse his friends, and he pulled the barber into the tank. This angered the barber, and he began a rough tussle with the passenger. The passenger was getting the best of it, when another member of the crew went to the barber’s assistance. A friend of the passenger, who had been perched in the rigging, watching the exercises, climbed down hurriedly, and was preparing to go to his friend’s assistance, when a word from the captain stopped the row; but for a time it looked as though there might be a fight between passengers and crew. A young member of the crew who was being shaved, became gay, and also pushed the barber into the tank. There was a shout of merriment, and when the young fellow was chased and brought back to the platform, he continued his joke, and pushed the doctor in. This caused the barber to strike the young fellow, which brought forth a round of hissing from the passengers looking on. Altogether, the affair was pretty rough, but everything soon calmed down, and Neptune and his lady, and the doctor, and the barber and his assistant, and the policemen, marched around the deck and took up a collection. A collection was also taken up by a passenger for the twelve new members of the crew who had been ducked. Neptune was represented by a tall young fellow we had seen scrubbing the decks every morning. He wore a grotesque costume, and represented his part very cleverly, as did the others. Soon after Neptune and his court had counted the money taken in the collection, the big whistle blew for a fire drill, and we had quite a busy afternoon.

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We had rather a pleasant Christmas, in spite of hot weather. Christmas eve we went to bed in sweltering rooms, with electric fans going, and slept without covering. At dinner next day we found the dining-room prettily decorated. We had turkey with cranberry sauce, plum pudding, pumpkin pie, etc. A good deal of champagne was ordered, as it costs but $2.75 per quart on a ship sailing to a foreign port, as against $4.50 at the average restaurant. The captain’s health having been proposed, he made a speech in which he complimented England, America, Santa Claus, and the passengers. He also said the “Sonoma” had been talked about unjustly by officers of a rival line. How readily rivals in any calling talk about each other!... While cracking nuts, we began throwing little rolls of paper at each other. This soon filled the room with colored strips of paper, and the waiters got about with difficulty. The captain began the paper-throwing, which was accepted as license by the others. While still seated in the dining-room, the second-cabin passengers passed through the aisles in a procession, the captain having given them permission to dance on the main deck. They brought a good violinist and piano-player with them, and the dancing and music continued until midnight. There is a larger company in the second-cabin than in the first, and they are much livelier. One woman, a professional whistler, gave a performance, and attracted great applause. She is on her way to Australia to fill an engagement. The pianist is a young newspaper man from Chicago.... Maud Powell, possibly the best woman violinist living, was a first-cabin passenger to Honolulu, but she did no playing, although she was agreeable and much liked by the passengers. My room is on the upper deck, near where the deck piano is located, and early one morning Miss Powell’s accompanist played awhile; to exercise his fingers a little, I imagine. It was really a remarkable performance, and I enjoyed it almost alone. Miss Powell was entered on the passenger list as Mrs. Turner, her married name, and her husband accompanied her, as business manager.

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Nearly all the passengers on the “Sonoma” are old travelers. On the Atlantic you meet many people who have never been over before, but Australia is out of the way, and is usually visited only by old travelers. Several people I have talked with have been nearly everywhere, and one man is making his seventh trip around the world.... We often have three or four rainstorms and rainbows in a day. A squall of rain came up this afternoon very suddenly, but in five minutes we were admiring the rainbow that accompanied it.

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We have a wonderful country in the United States, but we pay very little attention to ships. I heard the captain say at dinner today that the United States sends only twelve passenger ships to foreign countries, the “Sonoma” being one of them, whereas England sends eleven thousand. Germany comes next with five thousand, and little Japan has five hundred. Our decline in shipping began with the Civil War; we have given our attention to building up the country, and neglected ship-building. The captain says that many of our rich men are interested in foreign ship lines, and that they impudently maintain a lobby in Washington to fight every measure intended to benefit domestic shipping. Our financiers will in time gain control of many of the big foreign ship companies; this, in the captain’s judgment, will be the final solution of the problem.

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