THE MODERN odyssey;I&or ^^ULYSSES^ UR%T(^DATE Ex Libris C. K. OGDEN THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES uauJ THE MODERN ODYSSEY ULYSSES UP TO DATE The Modern Odyssey OR ULYSSES UP TO DATE IVITH THIRTY-ONE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLLOTYPE CASSELL & COMPANY Limited LONDON PARIS &^ MELBOURNL iSqi [all rights RESERVED! ^7^ IS DEDICATED, IN GRATEFUL REME.MBRANXE OE MANY PLEASANT DAYS IN NEW SOUTH WALES, Co LADY CARRINGTON. CONTENTS CHAPTER I. Holyhead to Duklin i CHAPTER n. Random Notes from the Atlantic 6 CHAPTER HI. A City of Perpetual Motion 19 CHAPTER IV. Through Nine States to Chicago 44 CHAPTER V. The Niagara Show ... 62 CHAPTER VI. A Voyage on Inland Waters 67 CHAPTER VII. The Canadian Pacific 83 CHAPTER VIII. California, a Lost Jewel 98 viii Contents. CHAPTER IX. PAGE Observations under the Hawaiian Flag 114 CHAPTER X. A Voyage on the South Pacific 123 CPIAPTER XL On the Shore of the Southern Ocean 152 CHAPTER Xn. An Australian Vanity Fair 172 CHAPTER Xni. Australian Democracy at Work and at Play 195 CHAPTER XIV. The Barrier Reef and Malay Archipelago 206 CHAPTER XV. A Glimpse of Cathay and Zipangu 222 CHAPTER XVI. A P. and O. Log from Yokohama to Calcutta 248 CHAPTER XVII. The City of Palaces 266 CHAPTER XVIII. The Pilgrims' City 282 CHAPTER XIX. The City of the Siege 295 Contents. ix CHAPTER XX. PACE The City of the Moguls 308 CHAPTER XXI. The City of Akbar 319 CHAPTER XXH. Cloudcuckootown 332 CHAPTER XXni. From Delhi to Bombay 339 CHAPTER XXIV. The Arabian Gulf and the Red Sea 353 CHAPTER XXV. The Land of the Delta ... ... 360 CHAPTER XXVI. A'lHENS AND THE LEVANT 37S CHAPTER XXVII. On the Shoues of the Bosi'horus ... ... ... ... 411 CHAPTER XXVIII. The Crimea 432 CH.\PTKR XXIX. AcRcss Europe ... 446 LIST OF PLATES. opposite page Menai Straits •. 3 White Star Liner, "Teutonic" 6 Capitol at Washington 51 Ice Shove at Montreal 87 Seal Rocks at the Golden Gate 113 Waikiki 119 On the Avon, Christchurch, N.Z 143 Orient Liner, "Orient" 151 Cattle Mob in Australian Bush 171 River Scene, New South Wales 191 Leura Falls, Katoomha 193 Sydney Heads... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 207 Junks in Lye-ye-moon Pass, Hong Kong 223 Flower Pagoda, Canton 227 Castle of Osaka 235 Moat at Tokio 239 Fujiyama 248 Benares 2S7 Kaiserhagh 298 Great Imambara ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 300 A Reach of the Juelum 30S T.\j Mahal .. 330 Amber ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 346 Public Buildings of Bombay ... .. .. ... ... 351 Citadel of Cairo ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 368 Pyramids of Giii/.lh t,-]}, ACROPlM.IS ... ... ... ... ... ... 388 Parthe.non 394 Mosque of Aii.med 414 Dolmabatchke 428 Therai'ia 430 PREFATORY NOTE. The thanks of the Author are due to the Editors of the Sf. James's Gazette and the Illustrated Sporting ajid Dramatic JVeivs for their courtesy in allowing certain articles which had appeared in those journals to be incorporated in these pages. The following firms of photographers have kindly given permission for their pictures to be reproduced : — Messrs. Frith and Co., Reigate ; Messrs. Valentine and Co., Dundee ; Messrs. Kerry and Jones, Sydney, N.S.W. ; P)ARTON Brothers, Dunedin, N.Z. ; Lala Dken Daval, Indore, C.I. The photographs were reproduced by the Collotype process, under the direction of Mr. Berghoff and Mr. Dineex, of the Automatic Engraving Company, Willesdcn Creen. W. Arthur Roord, Esq., and A. R. Deane, Est}., of the Association of Sun Artists, were good enough to give their valuable advice and assistance in illustrating the work. The Modern Odyssey. CHAPTER I HOLYHEAD TO DUBLIN. A HEAVY burden of responsibility rests upon the shoulders of the adventurer who, regardless of the trouble and anxiety which his conduct may entail upon future gene- rations, sails to unknown seas and lightly discovers a new country. All that watchful care for the interests of posterity, which should never be absent from the thoughts of the prudent, is banished from his mind. A thrill of selfish joy electrifies his frame as the stem of his boat grates upon the strand. He eagerly leaps down, makes an intaglio of ten toes on a virgin shore, and gives the name of his sweetheart to the most prominent feature of the scene. He hastily takes for granted that he has con- ferred a benefit upon mankind, and returns to his native land full of pride, and bequeaths to the world a legacy that cannot be repudiated. History has not handed down to us the name of the discoverer of Ireland. Even tradition is silent. It may be that, unlike most explorers, he was a person of pro- phetic instinct ; and if so, then perhaps, when the first glow of enthusiasm had cooled down, he began to be appalled by the consequences which he foresaw would result from his rash act ; and shrinking from the censure B 2 The Modern Odyssey. which unborn generations would pass upon him, pre- served his incognito and withdrew from pubUc notice. Nobody, except perhaps an Irishman, can deny that Ireland was discovered at some period of history; and as the name of no man is mentioned in connection witli that unfortunate event, it is probable that the island was discovered by a woman. A want of timely reticence is not unknown amongst the sex. The hen cackles when she has laid the o.^'g that will promptly be boiled. In like manner the lady who discovered Ireland did not refrain from proclaiming what she had done, and it is no doubt owing to the chivalry of her male contemporaries that her name is not mentioned in the chronicles. People soon found out that a difficult problem had been proposed for solution. Many worthy persons at- tempted to solve it, just as many worthy persons have attempted to square the circle. The earliest attempt on record is that of St. Patrick. He began with a disastrous blunder; to which, indeed, all the subsequent troubles of the country may be traced. He expelled the reptiles instead of expelling the natives. In a few centuries, during which nine-tenths of the Irish kings and chieftains died vicjlent deaths, Strongbow appeared upon the scene. He proposed to settle the question with the help of a few thousand Welshmen. The quaint genius of the Welsh nation had even then been noticed by the observant. It had chosen a kind of onion to be its emblem, though it had not yet conferred honorary citizenship upon that wayward individual the Welsher. Still, Strongbow had reason to believe that the ardent, riotous, self-assertive, unconventional, and zymotic temperament of the Welsh- man would have a pacifying influence over the Irishman ; and he invaded Wexford with a host of followers from Pembrokeshire. He, like his predecessor St. Patrick, failed, but not with disaster. When he found that he was Holyhead to Dublin. 3 unlikely to accomplish his object, he wisely married Eva, a beautiful Irish heiress. In those days there were Irish heiresses. She owned a castle in Waterford, and much more than three acres and a cow in Kildare. After another turbulent interval came Cromwell, who killed a large number of the inhabitants, and with consummate judgment persuaded forty thousand of the survivors to take service in the armies of our hereditary enemies, France and Spain. It does not appear that any practical attempts have been made since the time of Cromwell to deal with the Irish question. Facilis descensus Averni. The traveller to Ireland is carried in a fast and well-appointed train as far as Holy- head ; where he will find electric lights sparkling upon a convenient quay, and the Banshee or the Connaught ready to take him across the Channel at the rate of seventeen knots an hour. If the night is fine, the passage, even in winter, is far from unpleasant, except to that unfortunate class of traveller whose stomachic balance is so delicately poised that the ripple from the breast of a wild swan upon a mountain tarn would disturb it. The passengers are on board, and are composing themselves in the berths which they had the foresight to telegraph for from Euston Square ; the steamer casts off from the quay, glides down between the wharves, and soon her starboarded helm has brought her abreast of the break- water, under whose shelter perhaps a hundred or more ships are lying at anchor. Before she reaches the open sea and settles down to her course, the brilliant electric light on the South Stack is unmasked by the cliffs, and tlie full force of the tide sweeping round the projecting corner of Anglesea strikes her on the beam. The dark belt of water which is beyond the reach of the lightliouses on either side of the Chaimel is crossed in less than an hour, and then the Baily light on Ilowth B 2 4 The Modern Odyssey. is seen a little on the starboard bow. But if the wind blows lightly from the west, the presence of Ireland will probably make itself known to another sense. Yet it is not the scent of far-away flowers that strays across the sea. Neither the heather on the Wicklow Hills, nor the violets of those meadows where the Meath hounds do frolic, contribute to the essences projected eastward over the waves. An arm of mist and fog, laden with the fumes of the City of Dublin, stretches out its hand, and the touch may often be discerned at a distance of six miles from the shore. Now the Pool-beg foghorns strike the traveller's ear. A bellowing like the cry of a mammoth in distress issues from the darkness : the sound ceases : never was silence more acceptable. But in a moment another monster in pain has taken up the cry, and a shrill squeal such as might proceed from an orchestra of bagpipes pierces the ear. The steamer has reached the mouth of the Liffey; her engines are slowed; the electric light upon her bridge throws a beam of brightness into the gloom ; she stems the current of a dirty river, and cautiously gropes her way through the murky air to her berth at the North Wall. It is therefore probable that the impressions of those who reach Ireland for the first time early on a winter's morning will not be favourable to that remark- able country. But the traveller who chooses the late spring for his journey will not at once wish himself back in his club in London. The day breaks when the steamer is half-way across the Channel ; the white mists of the night stand aside, and disclose the Welsh hills below the brightening east, and the dark serrated line of the Wicklow mountains in the west ; the peaks gradually separate as the steamer approaches them ; the outline of the lower ground on the Irish shore takes form ; the Holyhead to Dublin. 5 profile of Howth grows distinct out of the gloom ; Dalkey Island detaches itself from the mainland ; the little waves are clear and sparkling, and gently play with the Kish light-vessel at the mouth of the Bay; the spires and towers of Dublin begin to rise out of the unbroken water-line between Howth and the hills ; and far away to the North the Mourne Mountains lie like a faint cloud upon the horizon. Many more beautiful scenes will be forgotten while the bright picture of Dublin Bay in the morning still lingers in the memory. A nearer view destroys much of the charm. The bay is fringed with plain and dowdy houses in the builder's and contractor's style of architecture. An almost con- tinuous line of stucco extends from Dalkey to Dublin. Here and there the monotony is broken by an ugly church or a modern castellated habitation. There is no place where a little aesthetic taste could have been more fitly shown, or where its absence is more painful, than on the southern shore of the Bay of Dublin. CHAPTER II. RANDOM NOTES FROM THE ATLANTIC. The Atlantic steamers call at Oueenstown for the mails about eighteen hours after leaving Liverpool. It is a dowdy little place which greatly disiigures a very beautiful haven. While the ship is at anchor some of the passengers usually go on shore in the tender to spend a few more last moments on British soil, but the farewell footsteps must not wander very far afield, for soon the train will be seen coming down the incline. The country-women press to the gangway with baskets of shamrock, and Paddy is there with a stock of shillelaghs. It does not take long to toss six hundred mail-bags into the tender, and as she casts off from the wharf the cries of the vendors of shamrock and shillelagh are redoubled. Prices fall, and the bears have the market to themselves. In the midst of the hubbub the wail of some poor woman who has just said farewell to her son rises from the crowd. For all the shamrock that he takes with him for luck, she cannot trust him to the purple fathoms or to that Wild West from which she knows he never will return to gladden her eyes. Yet he will cherish those tiny leaves long after they arc withered : they will comfort him in sickness and be the companions of his lonely hours ; and with his last breath he will desire that they shall be placed with him in his grave. In that tangled web of ~ tr. s 5C - H 3 rr D! C Random Notes from the Atlantic. 7 contradictions which make up the Irish character, many a wayward thread of gold may be discerned. It was late in the afternoon when the Utnbriaska passed the soHtary hghthouse on the Fastnet. The desolate shore receded, and at sunset the ragged head- lands which Erin trails in the Atlantic were lying like faint clouds on the horizon. The long, low swell rolled in from the north-west, and the gaps in the ranks at dinner showed that the battle had begun. ^ -X- -X- -H- -X- The traveller who has forgotten to provide himself with a deck-chair is like a bark that has no haven to fly to in the storm. There may be five hundred passengers on board, but one-third of them would inconveniently crowd the available seats on deck. In the simple language of the Latin exercise book, the chair is the comfort of the passenger. It is a place of refuge when he feels that his digestive organs are so nicely balanced that the slightest unnecessary exertion would render the equilibrium unstable, yet fears to go below ; and in fine weather it is ready to welcome him when he takes his afternoon nap or smokes his cigar under the stars. In the hands of an adroit owner it is invaluable. Per- haps he is a shy man who wishes to make the acquaint- ance of a fellow-passenger, a charming .American girl. How shall he compass it ? tic does not sit near licr at dinner, and none of the daily little incidents of the sea have given him the opportunity that he desires. He begins to dcs[)air ; the short voyage will soon be over, and she will pass on. One evening in the smoking- room a bright idea occurs to him. Every night the chairs are stacked in the passage between the deck-house and the engine-room sk)light. In the morning there is a redistribution of seats made with regard to the sun and the wind. " I will get up very early," he sa)-s to 8 The Modern Odyssey. himself, "before seven bells in the morning watch, and I will go on deck and find out where her chair has been placed, and I will place mine next to it ; she will never know that it did not come there by chance." He carries out his cunning plan ; but when he joyfully comes on deck after breakfast he is disgusted to find his chair occupied by that talkative fellow who is chattering hard to the American girl. Yet he does not like to evict the tenant, for it may be that she finds him agreeable ; and the poor schemer does not wish to incur her displeasure by depriving her of the companionship of one who, for all he knows, may be amusing her. So he makes no sign, but bides his time, and takes a long walk, every now and then looking furtively to see whether the intruder is still there. Tout vient a point a qui sait attendre. At last the fellow goes away, and the rightful heir comes into his own. In a few hours he has summoned up courage to address some mild platitude to his fair neighbour, which is courteously received ; and when the voyage is over he acknowledges that he owes to his deck-chair the pleasant hours he has spent by her side. She is both agreeable and well-informed ; she is graceful, and almost, if not quite, beautiful ; but it is rather the beauty of feature than that of complexion or expression. If her face seems somewhat too pale and intellectual, yet there is a peculiar wan, pathetic look upon it that is far more attractive and lovable than stereotyped smiles and laughing eyes. A subdued vein of sclf-assertiveness gives force to her character, and a subtle, unconscious trace of Puritanism, which never degenerates into prudery, lingers in it and refines it. * -^ -x- * -x- The wonders of the ocean will greatly interest the traveller who is making his first long voyage. lie will see Random Notes from the Atlantic. 9 strange sunsets in the west, and huge waves majestically rolling by. He will feel the presence of the chilling iceberg as it slowly drifts southward ; he will hear the weird music of the winds as they play upon the cordage ; he will learn how the sun and the stars must be questioned before the ship's position can be known. But none of these things will excite in him a feeling of such astonishment as that caused by the ladies' hair. He knows that they are cooped up in narrow cabins, in which there is scarcely room to turn. He knows that the looking-glass is hardly bigger than a sheet of note- paper. Yet he sees them come every morning on deck like birds who have just preened their beautiful plumage in the quiet recesses of some vast forest. Though the ship be rolling twenty degrees, the tresses are ar- ranged in the latest fashion. No trace of hurry can be discerned ; not a lock is awry, not a hair-pin pro- truding : nothing that delicate manipulation can effect is wanting. Neither the ant nor the bee nor the spider can furnish such an instructive example of industry, perseverance, and final success under apparently in- superable difficulties. ■X- ^ * -^f * These lines are written in a sunny corner of the spar deck, while the Umhriaska is paying out the knots at the rate of eighteen in the hour. The last land that was seen is now more than nine hundred miles astern. The sea is almost calm, for the breeze is so gentle that it scarcely ruffles the surface. An almost im}:)erceptible ground swell, the remnant of last week's gale, swa\'s the ship gently from side to side, but so slowly and carefully that if the shadows of the rigging did not move slightly to and fro, it would be imnoticed. Not a vessel breaks the clear line of the hori/.on ; not a cloud is seen upon the pale-blue sk\'. A lonel)- sea-bird is skimming over lo The Modern Odyssey. the deep, the sun is sparkling upon the waters ; and the luncheon gong will sound in two minutes and a half. ^ -X- -Jf -Jf -x- The energetic pedestrian, accustomed to his daily walk, need not forego it on the Atlantic. The forecastle is the very place for a ramble on a fine day, and there is a shady lane on each side of the main-deck. When the ship is rolling or sliding down into the trough of a wave, he will have steeper hills to climb than ever he climbed on land. The narrow passage between the smoking-room and the galley will remind him of a path- way in the mountains, and it needs but a little imagina- tion to see a leafy bower by the roadside in the hollow of the turtle-back. In the churning of the screw he will hear the roar of the waterfall, and the song of a nightingale in the boatswain's whistle. 4f ^ -x- ^ -x- Time passes slowly at sea, especially when the ship is steaming to the West at the rate of eighteen knots an hour, and each day is in consequence nearly forty minutes Ioniser than its predecessor. The intelligent traveller should endeavour to beguile the tedium of the voyage by extending his knowledge of the natural history of the ocean. There are many creatures whose habits he may advantageously study: such as the ship's cat, the ship's rats, the guillemot, the dolphin, the whale whose blubber is said to appear in the saloon in the form of mock-turtle soup, and the sea-serpent who shrinks so bashfully from view. But the animal which most concerns him personally is the Atlantic chicken. Not much is known about this remarkable bird. Thcnigh not web-footed, it seems to be met with only on the ocean. It is probably hatched artificially from an (^^^ placed accidentally too near the galley fire. It acquires strength and vigour by picking up scraps in the lee Random Notes from the Atlantic. ii scuppers. Naturalists say that it roosts on the cylinder covers, and crows to the dawn in the main rigging. In the course of a decade, constant exercise has completed its muscular development. About this time its physical endurance is severely tested, for the ship's cook has had his eye upon it for many years, and has been watching its hardy maturity with satisfaction. There is more than one exciting chase before it is finally driven into a corner in the steerage, and at length compelled to surrender its life. The ship's blacksmith trusses it ; a stoker roasts it ; and knives of a special quality of hardened steel are served up in honour of its appearance on the saloon table. ^ -Jf -Sf -x- -^ Last night one of the Irish emigrants died. Will he be buried at sea .'' " No," says the steward, " we've put him on ice, and he'll keep till we get to New York." •X- -x- -K- ^ ^ There is a solitary place upon the ship which, like a haunted castle near the margin of a lonely lake, is shunned even by its lawful occupants. It is not the bath-room amidships, albeit certain passengers have not washed for centuries. It is not the captain's cabin, for that is temporarily in the possession of a famil\- who cornered pigs successfully in Chicago. It is not the port hos[)ital, for the Dead is lying there. It is a thres- hold which no one crosses, because on the portal is inscribed the fatal legend, " Ladies' Cabin." Men may not enter, therefore women will not. The despondent poet who is inclined to deplore the degeneracy of mankind will observe with pleasure that when people are cut off from the outer world, and bereft 12 The Modern Odyssey. of their customary distractions, the primitive love of simple amusements re-asserts itself The Londoner who reads on the telegraph-board of his club the news of a European revolution or an Asiatic earthquake without a flutter of excitement, will rush to the side of an Atlantic steamer to verify the report that a bottle- nosed whale has been seen on the starboard bow. The banker whom nothing less than a panic on the Stock Exchange would disturb, grows animated over a game of quoits. But the effect of the ocean wave upon the British matron of middle age is still more remarkable. Her defensive attitude, her air of heave-half-a-brick- at-the-stranger, vanish softly away as the vessel recedes from land, and in less than forty-eight hours she will — if not indisposed — probably be heard chattering to her neighbour at dinner about the cooking and the day's run. As in a remote shooting lodge in the Highlands the arrival of the letter-bag is the event of the day, so is the official notification of the day's run on board an ocean steamer. It is the pivot on which conversation turns in the morning ; the subject is renewed when the chief officer is seen making faces at the sun at midday ; and the small hours of the afternoon are spent in dis- cussing the announced result. ■5f -x- ^ -x- -x- It is really most provoking. The Unibriaska, during the earlier days of the voyage, made steady, respectable, commonplace runs of 391, 369, and t^jt^ knots, and every one was satisfied. Now, however, she suddenly jumps up to 403 knots without the slightest excuse, and has thereby completely upset the calculations of those who gave high prices for low numbers at the selh'ng pool. No well-conducted mail steamer behaves in such a manner. Elightiness and irregularity of this kind tends to destroy the confidence which passengers should feel Random Notes from the Atlantic. 13 in their ship. They have just cause for complaint, and the matter will be promptly reported to the owners. The saloon displayed great interest in the announce- ment that the first number of the U)nbriaskan News would be published on the following day. The Editor informed intending contributors that articles of a per- sonal nature would not be admitted. It is probable that this precaution, however necessary it might have been, prejudicially affected the success of the newspaper, for the general opinion seemed to be, that though the story of the little boy who, in lat. 50° 16' N. and long. 20° 51' vV., complained to his mamma that his dinner would not keep swallowed, was very amusing, yet in general in- terest the Uinbriaskan N^ezvs hardly reached the standard of the other publication of the same printing office — the daily dinner menu. ■X- ^ -x- ^ ^ " No, I have never seen one myself, but a friend of mine has." A shout of astonishment rose from a group of Americans as these simple words modestly fell from an Englishman's lips. " Oh, my ! that's just lovely ! " said a beautiful girl from lialtimore, as she clapped her dainty hands ; " I knew I was right ! I was sure there was one ! His friend has seen it ! " "Stranger," said a young man who, like so many of his countrymen, wore the haggard look of a converted pirate upon his face, " Stranger, I am from Ohio, and it takes six ^q.^n York Custom House officers to get round one Ohio man ; so you'd better come down off the roof" " Guess your friend was on the splurge," said a middle- aged man from the Wooden Nutmeg State, who boasted 14 The Modern Odyssey. that he had travelled a hundred thousand miles in less time than any other man. The others said nothing, but a look of polite in- credulity passed over their features. Still the English- man adhered to his statemetit, in spite of open disbelief and covert sneer. " I repeat," he said, solemnly, "that though I have never seen one myself, yet a friend of mine, in whose veracity I have perfect confidence, assures me that he once saw an American man-of-war ! " ■Jfr -jf -x- -x- -x- No spot in the ocean has heard more music than the Banks of Newfoundland. As the ship approaches them, the inevitable concert looms in the foreground. But though there is a powerful basso profondo on board all Atlantic steamers, who may generally be relied on to perform a solo, yet like all his professional brethren he has many whims and caprices which cannot always be successfully humoured. If anything offends his dignity the chances are that he will sulk all the way from Queenstovvn to Sandy Hook. He only sings when he chooses : it may be at midnight, it may be at breakfast, it may be during the second dog-watch. He has no tact; he listens to no remonstrances upon the untimely occasions of his musical efforts ; he will interrupt a lady without a word of apology; and he will continue his song for an indefinite period, even though no encore shall have been demanded. He is called the Steam Whistle ; and his voice is usually heard during the fogs prevailing on the Banks. But there is seldom such a dearth of musical talent on board a sliip that the concert has to depend solely upon the airs and graces of a Steam Whistle for its success. Frequently other performers may be found. There may be a migrant prima donna on board ; there will surely be half a dozen amateurs who can thump the Random Notes from the A tlant/c. i 5 piano and twitter little ditties. The services of the Steam Whistle are by no means necessary in every case. They should only be employed as a last resource to fill up the programme in emergencies, such as when the tenor or the contralto is sea-sick. The breeze died away ; the light from the golden fringes of the western clouds fell upon the dark sea ; the crimson of the setting sun shot across the ocean, pierced the crests of the cold pure waves, and was magically transmuted into new colours of marvellous beauty as it passed through the crystal drops. Nothing could be lovelier than the luminous ridge of water which crowned each wave as it leaped upwards to meet the last rays from the west : nothing more enchanting than the contrast of the snowy foam and the beryl green of the translucent crest with the amethystine blue of the un- illumined trough. And while we watched and wondered, the sun had dwindled to a mere spark on the horizon, soon to be quenched like a torch in the deep. Yet it was long before the incarnadine glow of the sunset had ceased to fall on the westward slope of the waves. Nor did the approach of night leave them in darkness, for soon the forms of those same waves, that had so lately sparkled in the sunshine, were delineated by their own phosphorescent foam as they were parted at the bow and ran along the sides ; and it seemed as though the ocean, as well as the sky, was studded with stars. In a little while even those restless waves were weary and sank to sleep ; for when the moon rose, and slowly emerged from an almost motionless bank of clouds, there was hardly a ripple to break the continuity of the narrow lane of light she threw across the water in our track, as though to mark the bridge by which we 1 6 The Modern Odyssey. were spanning the unknown valley three thousand fathoms down below. # ^ -jf * -x- It often happens that the look-out on the forward bridge of the Umbriaska catches sight of America before six days have elapsed since the rocky coast of Ireland sank below the eastern horizon. The colour of the sea changes, on approaching land, from a greyish blue into a dirty green ; the national rig of the country, the three-masted schooner, is seen on every side ; and many passengers, who have been remarkable during the voyage for their dowdy appearance, begin to display their shore clothes. The most patriotic American would probably admit that the first view of his great country is not impressive. The low, sandy shore of Long Island, broken here and there by a row of bathing houses extended in skirmishing order on the flanks of an enor- mous hotel, appears on the starboard bow out of the mist on the horizon. Yet when the bar at Sandy Hook is once crossed, few scenes are so full of variety and charm as the bright picture of New York Harbour on a summer's afternoon. The gentle breeze from the south brings down the scent of flowers from the heights of Navesink, the land-locked water is covered with a satin sheen, and seems so calm and restful after the turmoil of the Atlantic. The ship enters the Narrows, the health officers come on board from the quarantine station on Staten Island, and hold a conversation over the emigrant who will never return to his native village in Kildare ; and as the Umbriaska slowly steams past the wooded shore, the mails are tossed into the Post Office tender, which waylaid her on the departure of the health boat. Every kind of vessel is afloat upon the crowded haven ; a sloop, as trim and shapely as a yacht, but disfigured by the advertisement which Random Notes from the Atlantic. \y she displays in huge letters upon her mainsail, drifts with the tide towards Bcdloe's Island, whereon stands the biggest statue in the world ; the advertisement on the sloop and the colossal size of the statue appro- priately drawing the attention of the European traveller, the former to the utilitarian, the latter to the grandiose, instincts of the American nation. A side-wheel steamer, of the type common in inland waters, rushes by with three decks full of excursionists for Coney Island or Rockaway Beach ; the snorting of the tugs, some of them unattached, others with long trains of barges in their wake, but all decorated with the effigy of an American eagle on the pilot-house, is heard on every side ; the taut spars of an Australian clipper tower over the deck of the Umbriaska as the steamer glides under her stern ; a cat boat is scooting along to Bay Reach ; the graceful curve of Brooklyn bridge, spanning the East River as it were with threads of gossamer, comes into view ; and New York, not covered with a pall of smoke, but bright and gleaming in the pure air, is seen basking in the sunshine like an Italian city on the shores of the Mediterranean. The tugs under the counter have shoved the Um- briaska into her berth on the North River, and the voyage is over. The Fairy of Lake Erie, who has recognised her father and brother in the crowd as- sembled on the wharf, rushes about the deck in a bewilderment of joy, and the Englishman, who had a theory that American girls were neither aftectionate nor demonstrative, acknowledges that he was mistaken. Farewell, Farewell, dear little Fairy of Lake Eric I It is probable that few, if an}', of us will have the great pleasure of meeting you again ; but many, many good wishes will follow you to your home in the Forest Cit\-, C 1 8 The Modern Odyssey. and pursue you thence to Florida in the winter, when, Hke other bright things, Hke the sun and the fireflies and the humming-birds, you go to the warmer skies of the South. Good-bye, Good-bye, dear Httle Fairy of Lake Erie ! CHAPTER III. A CITV OF PERPETUAL MOTION. In the fifteenth century Europe both suffered an affront which has not yet been aven<^ed, and performed a deed which has made that epoch one of the most important in the history of the world. The capture of Constanti- nople by the Turks in 1453 was followed in less than forty years by the discovery of America. It is not probable that the latter event was a result of the former, yet the supposition would not be so fanciful as might be imagined. When the Emperor Constantine Palaiologos appealed to the West for help against the Turks, who were be- sieging Constantinople, a few Italian volunteers from Venice and Genoa went to his assistance. After the capture of the cit\', the survivors returned no doubt greatly impressed with the power of the Asiatic invader ; and it is probable that Columbus, in his younger days at Genoa, often conversed with some of those soldiers who had fought on the shores of the Bosphorus, and whose experience led them to belit^ve that l^iuope was in peril. It was not an unreasonable fear, for the Moors had not yet been expelled from Spain, and the Turks not long- afterwards were la\'ing siege to Vienna and ravaging Bavaria. Columbus had good grounds for imagining that luirope was destined to be overrun by the Ma- homedcUis, and that a " bag-and-baggage " policy was C 2 20 The Modern Odyssey. likely to be enforced against the inhabitants ; and when he sailed to the West to discover, as he hoped, an easier way of access to India — the existing highway to it being in the hands of the victorious Saracens — -he was, perhaps, actuated by other feelings than the love of adventure. It is, at least, not impossible that the motive power which drove the explorers out of the Iberian Peninsula towards the West and the South — for only six years intervened between the discovery of America and the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope — originated in the shock of the capture of Constantinople slowly transmitted through Europe ; just as in mechanics, a blow falling upon one extremity of a beam drives away an un- attached body at the other. At the beginning of the sixteenth century no part of Europe, except, perhaps. Great Britain, appeared to be beyond the swing of the Turkish sword ; and this period was remarkable for maritime enterprise and exploration. Europe had already recognised the westward tendency of the course of empire ; America was discovered by one Italian, and received its name from another Italian who did not discover it. It cannot be denied that a traveller who arrives in New York with the firmest resolution to allow nothing that he has ever heard, read, or imagined on the subject of America to influence his judgment, is sorely tried at the very doorstep. He may freely acknowledge that the Colonial [policy of George III. and Lord North was one of the most foolish blunders recorded in history ; that Washington was one of the greatest men the world has ever seen ; that rebellion was not only justifiable, but obligatory ; and that there is much to be said in favour of a Republican form of government. Human nature, however, is so constituted that a mere trifle suffices to awaken dormant feelings, and the A City of Perpetual Motion. 21 old leaven of national prejudice is liable to become operative" at the sight of the two objects which first arrest the attention of the traveller entering the United States at New York. One is an hotel on Coney Island built in the form of an elephant ; and the other is the most conspicuous feature of a beautiful haven — the Statue of Liberty on Bjdloc's Island, the gift of the French Republic to the American people. It is a colossal figure of a woman holding a torch, which is supposed to be enlightening the world with the flame of Liberty. Had it been erected on some lonely headland to be a landmark for ships ap[)roaching the continent, its appearance might not have been so jarring ; but in the midst of a crowded harbour the massive inartistic figure is strangely out of place. Whether the world needs enlightening with the peculiar blaze of liberty which kindles in America is a question for political philosophers to determine ; and certainly, to the majority of persons not American by birth, the effigy will not immediately reveal the intention of the donors and acceptors of the gift. To an Englishman it appears to be an allegorical figure of American Democracy brandishing a clumsy weapon, in the form of an angry woman wielding a bludgeon in her uplifted arm ; and when the behaviour of the United States to luigland — as, for example, in the affairs of Lord Sackvillc and of the fisheries in Behring's Straits — is considered, this view of the emblematic teaching of the statue on Bcdloe's Island is not unjustifiable. Each newly accredited foreign ambassador to the L'nited States should attentively stud)' the figure as he sails up the harbour of New York. In justice to America, it must be acknowledged that the idea of a statue of Liberty was exotic. It was engendered in the brain of a I'renchman — one of a nation 22 The Modern Odyssey. which has always had a Platonic admiration for the goddess, but which has never cared to woo her for her own sake. It is, however, the largest structure of its kind, and this gives more satisfaction to the American than the symbolic meaning, to which he is too practical to attach much importance. As a work of art it has little merit, but as a wonderful construction it is worthy of notice. It has, moreover, at least this use : it strengthens the fibres of the digestive organs of the mind, and enables a traveller more easily to gulp down many other extraordinary things which he will find in America. It stands. at the threshold of the Empire, and it prepares him for what he will meet within the doors. It is his touchstone. If he can behold it with no more intense feeling than a passing sensation of wonder that the monstrous creature of a nightmare should have been set up in such a place, he has proved himself fit to travel in America. If it pains him, he had better engage a passage in the next steamer for Europe. A fellow-countryman of Columbus is said to have been the first mariner to enter the harbour of New York ; but Hudson, a renegade Englishman in the service of the Dutch, made it practically known to Europe. A colony from Holland was founded at the mouth of the river, and named New Amsterdam, and rc-named New York when the Dutch were expelled soon afterwards by the English. The pride of ancestry is too deeply em- bedded in human nature to be uprooted by democratic institutions ; and it is now the boast of some New York- families to be able to establish their descent from the Dutch pioneers, who are in America what Norman ancestors arc in h'ngland. The primitive Dutchman who settled at the mouth of the Hudson, and the East Anglian who landed on the coast of Massachusetts, neither of them belonging to a A City of Perpetual Mot/ on. 23 community remarkable for genius, intellect, or originality, respectively established two cities in America — New York, the most restless and intense place of commerce in the world, and Boston, which believes itself to be the intellectual centre of one hemisphere at least. New York is more than a mere city : it is a congested nation of people in a hurry, jostling one another on Manhattan Island, a narrow piece of land encompassed by three rivers. The boundaries were long ago stretched to the bursting point — at least, on the southern portion of the island — and swarms from the Manhattan hive are con- tinually settling on the adjoining shores. Both Jersey City, on the opposite side of the Hudson, and Brooklyn, on the western extremity of Long Island, are populous places, the latter being the third largest city in the United States ; while smaller towns have sprung up on almost every suitable site in the neighbourhood of the metropolis. The condition of the streets is the first thing which attracts attention in New York, and it would be thought disgraceful in a small English town of a few thousand inhabitants. Americans themselves acknowledge that it is so, and excuse the neglect by alleging that the rigour of the climate and the extremes of heat and cold to which the city is subject make it difficult to construct a satisfactory roadway, and that the difficulty is further increased by the number of public bodies which have the right to break up the road whenever they think fit. A dri\e of half a mile in a New York cab — a method of progression costing a dollar,, at the least — or a stroll in the streets after a shower of rain, should be attempted by no one except of necessity. The roads, under the control of a frequently corru[)t municipality, are matched by the sidewalks. In some parts of the city the main- tenance of the footway in front of the houses is left to the 24 The Modern Odyssey. householders, who pave it as they please, or leave it un- paved. Some prefer concrete, others bricks laid on their edges, others flagstones untruly levelled. It is impossible to walk a dozen yards in some of the chief thoroughfares without discomfort, or even without danger. The patched pavement is not the only obstacle to locomotion, though that impedes it sufficiently. The space in front of each house is considered to be part of the tenant's estate. He may do what he likes with it. He may lounge in his rocking-chair there ; he may station his dust-bin there ; he may block it with crates and boxes and the wares of his trade ; he may erect on it a stall for the sale of candy. Even in the most crowded streets waggons or trollies may be seen drawn up across the sidewalk, and discharging their contents into the shop or the cellar. Probably the most barbarous specimen of paving to be seen in any civilised city is along the shore of the Hudson, in rear of the piers. Speaking generally, the appearance of New York conveys the impression to a stranger that the rush of life and pressure of commerce and business are so great that the inhabitants have not had leisure to attend to such small matters as the condition of the streets. In the conflict between personal liberty of action and public convenience, the latter is usually worsted in the United States. It is better that ten thousand foot-passengers should be turned out of the way rather than that one citizen should be deprived of the privilege of encumbering his frontage. An American is, in fact, the most patient individual under the sun. He will put up with an amount of inconvenience which in another country would excite a revolution. He does not object to being jostled off his sidewalk by a boy on a bicycle, or to being startled by a street Arab letting off fireworks on the pavement on the Fourth of July. The streets of New York make him A City OF Perpetual Motion. 25 wonderfully tolerant of all other inconveniences. Like the law, the American does not concern himself about very small things. His idea of proportion makes him ignore them. His pride is justly gratified by the wealth, scope, and infinite perspective of his country ; and with these before his eyes, he can afford to remain unruffled by petty annoyances, which he complacently and con- tentedly leaves to be remedied by some future generation which shall possess a microscopic mind. His eye is not offended by the sight of wires in festoons attached to poles which are little better than trees, with the roots, the bark, and the branches removed. In America, electricity has become almost as necessary to life as air and water, and therefore it is supplied in all haste. The appearance of the wires and the poles would lead a stranger to believe that there was a time when the American community was in danger of extinction through lack of the mys- terious agency, and that the disaster was only averted by the promptest measures — by hewing timber in the primeval forest, and setting up the trunks in New York. Each street is reticulated for telegraphic, telephonic, and lighting purposes with wires hanging at random from the poles in all varieties of curve ; and as the electric light and the telephone are used in most of the shops and places of business, a bundle of ragged wires issues from every house front. In the busy part of Broadway the number of wires is almost countless. On each side is a line of poles carrying at least a hundred, and each pole sends out suckers in all directions, some wires rising to the roofs or upper floors, others plunging into basements and cellars. The entire electric service is arranged, without regard to appear- ance, in the rough-and-ready manner peculiar to America ; and the street looks as it it were held in 26 The Modern Odyssey. the tangle of an enormous spider^s web deranged by a gust of wind. It may be an inconvenient system to carry the wires over the house-tops, as in England ; but in that position they, at least, do not form an eyesore. It is true that a law has been passed to compel all wires to be placed underground ; but in America laws bow to popular sentiment, and it has not been enforced, probably from a very natural fear of creating another encumbrance in the streets. If all the telegraphic, telephonic, and electric lighting companies had the right to exhume their wires for examination whenever they saw fit, a new and still more formidable obstruction to locomotion would appear. Although the electric light is employed almost universally. New York is not well lighted. A brilliant light here and there, which is effectual over a limited area only, has been substituted for the gas-lamp of Europe, with the result that the chief streets are dependent upon the lights in the shops for the greater part of their illumination ; and when the shops are closed at night, the middle portion between two electric light standards is left almost in darkness. A small circle surrounding the standard is illumined with un- necessary brilliance, but beyond it the gloom of twilight prevails. Another inconvenience has resulted from the adoption of electric lighting. The street names arc not inscribed upon the houses, but on the gas-lamps at the corners — an excellent plan. The gas-lamps, however, having fallen into disuse, are not kept in repair, and many of the labels have disappeared, while those that remain cannot easily be read at night unless they happen to be near an electric light. As exemplified in New York, the electric light may be pronounced inefficient for the illumination of a large city. Towards the middle of the eighteenth century the A City OF Perpetual Motion. 27 practice of numbering the houses in a street instead of distinguishingthem by signboards was adopted in London; but several generations passed by before people discovered the natural corollary of numbering the houses : nainely, numbering the streets themselves, and in the old and irre- gularly planned cities of the Eastern hemisphere it would have been impracticable. When, however, a city was laid out upon a geometric plan, it was natural that the streets should be numbered instead of being styled by meaning- less names, which gave no indication of locality or of relative position. No person can learn anything of the situation of Waterloo Street with respect to Preston Street by means of their names ; but if the former be called Eighth Street and the latter Eleventh Street, it may be inferred that they are near together. Here the practical genius of the American people, unhampered by history, tradition, or ancestral wisdom, is shown. Even in Europe an attempt at scientific nomenclature was some- times made, if not upon an arithmetical, at least upon a geographical basis. Every English town has its East, West, North, and South Street ; and herein lay the germ of the idea successfully developed in America. In New York the streets running across the narrow island of Manhattan are numbered, except in the southern and less modern quarter of the city, which was long over- shadowed by European customs. Where the streets begin to be numbered, there modern New York may be said to begin; and at present it ends with One Hundred and Forty-fourth Street. The streets are crossed by nine Avenues, also numbered, and the position of any street or of any house of which the address is known can be found as readily as a given square on a chess-board. The blocks are equal in width, and the distance between an\- two streets, of which the numerical difference is identical, is 28 The Modern Odyssey. usually the same. Thus a foot-passenger knows exactly how far he will have to walk to reach Twentieth Street from Thirtieth Street, and that the distance is the same as that between Twenty-seventh and Thirty-seventh Streets. The streets themselves serve the purpose of milestones. In some cities, not, however, in New York, the system has been ingeniously extended. The numeration of the houses in a street is made with regard to their position relatively to the streets crossing it at right angles, and irrespective of the total number of houses it may contain; with the result of still further facilitating the discovery of any house, especially in a very long street. Thus, for example : Chestnut Street in Philadelphia is inter- sected by a series of numbered streets. Every house in Chestnut Street which lies between Eighth and Ninth Streets is numbered from 800 upwards, and similarly every house lying on the Chestnut face of the block lying between Sixteenth and Seventeenth Streets bears a number between 1600 and 1700 ; though, perhaps, there may be only houses enough in the block to take up the first tvvcnty-fivc numbers of the century. Thus, if the number 2212 appears over the door of a house, it is not to be inferred that there are at least 2212 houses in the street, but only that the house in question lies between Twenty- Second and Twenty-Third Streets. This is called the Philadelphia system. Another system, differing in detail, but likewise ad- vantageous, especially in a suburban street, is that of numbering the houses according to the position they occup)' in it, irrespective of the total number already built. In a long line of detached and senii-cK lachcd houses numbers are assigned to the unoccui)ied gaps. Thus, the house next to 640 may be 650, so that when the nine houses are built to fill the intervening space, A City OF Perpetual Mot/ on. 29 they have numbers already provided for them, and the necessity of renumbering the street is avoided. When a century shall have mellowed the magnificent mansions which have been erected during the last gene- ration, Fifth Avenue will be one of the most beautiful streets in the world. At present it is an architectural exhibition on a large scale. Every variety of structure which an American architect inspired by dollars can design, is there ; from a marble palace in the Italian style to a feudal castle. The splendid edifices are so new and faultless that the eye longs for some sign of decay: but the clear sunshine falling upon the too per- fect roofs and walls discovers no flaw in them. It is a wonderful display of all the architectural styles, but the effect is unpleasing, and if some of the Ik^uscs were not partially covered with green creepers, which lend a grudging touch of nature to the show, it would be almost painful. A portcullis and a postern in the heart of New York without a chip on tiie masonry or a. speck of rust upon the bars is an insult to the Middle Ages. At the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Broadway stands Madison Square, an open space which com[)ares favourably with a London square. The latter in general needs only a few tombstones to complete its resemblance to a cemetery. It is delightful to sit under the trees in Madison Park after dark, when the electric light falls through the leaves of the maples, making them stand out a transparent green against a darker background o{ sk\', and throws the shadows of their shapes on to the pave- ment, while the fireflies dart to and fro among the foliage. Like most American cities, Xew Vcjrk hjoks best bv- night, and the veiling of its defects by the darkness brings many- beauties into view. Tlie clear sky sparkles with all the stars that the overhead wires have not hid. The air is 30 The Modern Odyssey. warm but fresh, and the taint of smoke does not float upon the breeze. Yet only a few hundred yards away night has unveiled a foil to the pleasant scene. Between the trees appears the side of a house in the angle of Broadway, covered with the illuminated figure of an electric corset, and underneath is a screen on which a series of advertisements is thrown by a magic lantern from sunset to midnight. It is impossible to escape, either by day or by night, from the intrusive presence of the advertisement. It appears on every vacant space and in many ingeniously adapted positions, and draws attention to every conceivable commodity. Yet one thing is more frequently advertised than any other — with such ubiquity, in fact, that a stranger might be led to suppose that it was the chief necessity of life in America. It is not some recent mechanical invention destined to enrich thousands. It is not some new solu- tion of a vexed moral problem calculated to promote the happiness of mankind. It is not a new book or a new play. It is not a new soap or a new game. It is only a Liver Pill. Without exaggeration it may be said that the adver- tisements of liver pills are one of the most remarkable features of the United States of America. Wherever an advertisement is possible, a puff of a liver pill will surely appear. A foreigner would be justified in arriving at the conclusion, after a short survey of the country, that the Liver Pill in its various forms was the staple of commerce in the Eastern States. It is terrible to think of the amount of suffering from dyspepsia which the pill advertisements imply. Ice water, hot cakes, bad cooking, and hasty meals, followed by a strong cigar and a drink at the bar, have created a nation of dyspeptics. Next to the advertise- ments of Liver Pills, the pictorial advertisements of Corsets are most frequently seen in New York. A City of Perpetual Motiox. 31 Delmonico's stands in the angle formed by the divergence of Broadway from the western side of Madison Square. Here every Englishman thinks it his duty to dine once at least ; and here he may obtain a most excellent dinner at a cost more than four times what would be paid for it at a good London club. Huyler's, at a short distance from the Square, affords a characteristic American sight. On a hot afternoon in summer, two long counters are thronged with women of all ages hastily consuming a compound of cream, fruit juice, soda water, and ice, as if there were no leisure in America even for them. Perhaps two or three men may be seen patiently standing outside the serried ranks, but they are present in the capacity of pay- masters, and not as partakers of the feast, and are so greatly outnumbered, and appear to be so out of their element, that a solitary Englishman hesitates to enter alone. Ice-cream soda, for which Huyler's is famous, is certainly the pleasantest form of ice and cream in combination. It is not so solid as the British ice, which too often resembles a chip from an iceberg, and it is an agreeable compromise between a long drink and a sweetmeat. Madison Square, which, scarcely more than thirty years ago, was the northern limit of New York, now stands in the centre of the city, on the line which roughly divides the commercial from the residential quarter. The chief clubs are in the neighbourhood, the majority of them on Fifth Avenue. The many English- men who have received the hospitality of American clubs in New York and elsewhere appreciate all the more fully the kindness with which it is offered because they know that they cannot return it at home. Few English clubs of the better class allow unofficial foreigners to become temporary members ; }'et in Xcw 32 The Modern Odyssey. York the members of the exclusive Knickerbocker Club can offer the use of it to their non-resident friends for a short period. The other clubs, not only in New York, but also throughout the States, are equally hospitable to strangers who are properly introduced. When a few allowances are made for difference of habits, Ameri- can clubs will be found fully as comfortable and generally more luxurious than English clubs. During the daytime they are almost deserted. There is no lazy class in America, or, at least, it is not numerous ; and there is so little leisure that even weddings are post- poned until the evening. Every man has some occu- pation, and the club lounger is almost unknown. The rooms are more liberally supplied with books and news- papers than in England ; the chief English journals are taken in ; and the familiar red and gold of " Burke's Peerage " are not absent from the Republican book- shelves. Perhaps a time may come when English clubs will follow the good example, and that it will be possible to invite American gentlemen to make use of them. They would greatly value the boon, and there is many an English club fossil full of prejudice, to whom an hour of their society would do much good, and several com- mittees to whom they could give some useful hints in club management. For the first three miles of its course Fifth Avenue is lined on either side by houses which shelter a greater aggregate of luxury and wealth than any other resi- dential street in the world. It then forms the eastern side of Central Park, a public place of which New York has good reason to be proud. The long and narrow strip of marsh and rock, which stood greatly in the way as the increasing city approached, would not now be recognised by a middle-aged citizen who sauntered in A City of Perpetual Motion. 33 the pleasant walks and drives and woods of Central Park. Many have been the misdeeds of the New York municipality, but in this instance it has done well ; and that an unpromising tract should have been converted into such an agreeable place of recreation is greatly to its credit. New York is rapidly closing in upon Central Park, and in a few years it will be entirely surrounded by houses. A portion of the area is occupied by the reservoirs which supply the city with water, and the rest is covered with groves, lakes, lawns, and gardens, all of them artificial, but all so artistically arranged that they appear to have been placed there by Nature. There are delightful rambles in hilly copses overlooking sheets of water ; benches for the weary in the midst of flowering shrubs ; fields for baseball and lawn- tennis; rides and trotting tracks; fountains and statues; retreats for the romantic ; parades for the worldly ; all kept in admirable order. The dowdy shrubs and smoke-dried grass and trees which give such a melancholy look to a London park during the greater part of the year are not found in Central Park. The flowers are liberally bestowed, and not dealt out in niggardly units ; and if the trees are not so fine nor the expanse of turf so wide as in London, there is far greater variety of scenery. There are spots in Central Park where it is possible to imagine oneself, without a violent stretch of fancy, in a woodland district of the South of England ; there are dingles which recall Pembrokeshire. Nor have the associations of the place been spoilt by the intrusion of unpleasing objects. No shooting-galler)- or merry-go-round is there. Central Park is a sanctuary from which even ad\crtiscments ha\-e been excluded. It is possible to stroll for hours without seeing the notice of a corset or a liver pill except perhaps half a mile away on some loft\- hoarding in the cit}-. An D 34 The Modern Odyssey. Egyptian obelisk of the time of Thothmes III., inscribed with the victories of Rameses II., stands on an eminence, and reminds the American of the strange destiny which overtakes monumental records. It would be rash to predict the ultimate fate of the Statue of Liberty, or of the pile on Bunker's Hill, or of the Eiffel Tower. Per- haps in a few thousand years they may be adorning the capital of an African Empire on the banks of the Congo, or the chief city of an Australian Republic on the shores of Port Phillip. The regulations imposed upon persons frequenting the park are strict but not unreasonable : for example, pedestrians are not allowed to walk upon the track set apart for driving, and foot and mounted policemen are stationed at various points to enforce the rule. It is only in Central Park, when he tries to claim the right of man to walk upon a road reserved for quadrupeds, that a well-conducted traveller in America is likely to be brought into personal relations with the police, and there- fore his opportunities of studying them are iQ\w. To a superficial observer the American patrolman appears to differ greatly from the English constable. The latter is a machine wound up to walk the streets in a plain but handsome uniform, to enter an occasional memorandum in a notebook, to preserve order to the best of his ability, and to answer the questions of countrymen. A smile seldom lights up his solemn face; and if not quick, he is fairly intelligent. The New York patrolman, on the other hand, is a sprightly individual in an ugly grey helmet, blue tunic, and brown trousers, with a metal badge upon his breast. Me lounges airily through the streets, toys with his truncheon, chats pleasantly with a friend, and, when tired, leans comfortably against a lamp-post. If the American papers are worthy of credit, his look of A City of Perpetual Motiox. 35 intelligence is but an assumed pretence, and he is in reality an addlchcadcd simpleton. The New York patrolman naturally suggests another official, the Custom House officer, who is usually the first American encountered on his native land by the traveller. He is the guardian of the revenue, and by rights his mental qualities should be far above the common, for he is constantly engaged in defeating the attempts of the acutest nation upon earth to evade their own laws. Yet his disposition has not been altogether soured. Many traces of human nature are still found in him. He is not only open to bribery, but he also abates the rigour of his examination as the afternoon wears on and his supper- time approaches ; though, when the day is young, he often struggles, with final success, to bring a doubtful article within the mischief of a preposterous tariff. Female Custom officials have been recently appointed in New York, and they are by no means popular with travellers of their own sex, as they are quick to detect an awkward arrangement of dress — such as an uncon- scionable bustle, or a padded garment which may contain a whole treasure liable to duty. Although New York is the largest city on the Ameri- can continent, it is not the capital of the United States, nor even of the State of New York ; and the public build- ings are therefore not numerous. They are, however, among the most costly that have ever been erected. The city municipality is mainly in the hands of the residuum of Irish emigrants which has never percolated into the interior of the country, and it has often regarded itself as a dollar-distributing and dollar-retaining machine, and has spared no exi)ense in acting on this principle. Of its productions, the most remarkable is the Court House, which was begun nearly thirty years ago, and is not yet finished, though no less than ^^2,400,000 have D 2 36 The Modern Odyssey. been ostensibly devoted to the fabric, its ornamentation and furniture. The cost of an American public building is usually its most noticeable feature. Of the structures erected for other purposes the most remarkable is the wonderful suspension bridge over the East River, connecting New York with its Long Island suburb, Brooklyn. The cost of it was i^3,ooo,ooo, a sum sufficient to build and equip 300 miles or more of railway in many countries. It is the longest suspension bridge in the world, being, with its approaches, more than a mile in length. It rises to a height of 135 feet above the water. Besides footpaths and carriage roads, two tracks convey trains drawn by ropes constantly to and fro, like a shuttle in a loom. The cars are shunted at each end by locomotives, which do not cross the bridge. The wonder is that it should have been found profitable to spend such a sum in slightly reducing the time and the inconvenience of the transit between New York and Brooklyn. To an unadvanccd European mind the ferries would appear to be sufficient under the circumstances to accommodate the traffic. The condition of the streets of New York having rendered carriage and pedestrian traffic difhcult, it became necessary to adopt other means of intercom- munication. The chief thoroughfares are traversed throughout their length either by the Elevated Railway or by tram\Nays, or by both. The cit)' is a narrow oblong in shape, and is thus peculiarly well adapted for either of these methods. Some of the streets — as, for example, Bowery — have no less than four lines of I:orse-cars running side by side, in addition to the Elevated Railway; and at short intervals these are crossed b)' transverse lines running from the East River to the North River, so that thiCre are scarcely any two points south of Central Park \\ hich are not in connection. 1 he A City of Perpetual Motion. 37 horse-car is essentially a democratic conveyance. The millionaire from Fifth Avenue goes Down Town in it side by side with the artisan or Irish labourer, and the judge steps out of it to open Court. Private carriages are rarely seen in the business quarters, and without its horse-cars New York would be paralysed. The tinkle of the bells on the harness is heard everywhere, and never ceases except during a few hours of the night. The switches at the junctions are ingeniously worked by the horses' feet treading on a plate controlling a lever. The cars are a comfortable and a convenient haven of refuge for the European traveller bewildered by the bustle and dis- mayed by the difficulty of foot locomotion in the crowded streets. However, the stranger in Paris who complained that he had never been able to visit that part of the city called " Complet," because the cars running to it were invariably full, would not be able to say the same in New York ; for, technically, an American horse-car is never crowded, and always holds as many passengers as care to get on to it. It is the most elastic body in mechanics. The Elevated Railway of New York has four parallel lines, which converge, like the fingers of a hand, at the Battery, the southern extremity of the city. One ter- minates at Central Park, and the other three run, two of them along adjoining streets, as far as the Haarlem river, the northern boundary of the city. In addition to these main lines there are loops and short shuttle lines, which respectively serve the business centre, the New York Central Depot, and one of the ferries to Long Island. The Elevated appears to be an extra- ordinary construction to those whose ideas of railway engineering are derived from the l£uropean practice. It follows the line of the streets, and scarcely a house was pulled down to make room for it ; and it turns corners 38 The Modern Odyssey. and curves of a radius that would drive an inspector of the British Board of Trade out of his mind. Pillars rising from the middle of the road or from the kerbstone support the girders which carry the rails. The railway is in fact a continuous viaduct. The erection is not an ornament to the City, but the appearance of the streets of New York hardly admits of being spoilt. The line for the greater part of the distance is at the level of the first floor of the houses, and in many places, especially at the corners, where it approaches as near as possible to the angles in order to increase the radius of the curves, the house windows are but a few feet from the passing train. In the wider streets the tracks are separated and run along opposite sides, each supported by a single row of pillars ; and even when the two tracks are contiguous and require a double row the traffic in the street below is hardly interfered with. The trains run at very short intervals, and constantly one train is seen approaching a station as another is leaving it on the same line. Ex- cept at the terminal points, the junctions, and the curves where the line runs round a blind corner, there are no signals. The cars are clean and comfortable, and the fare is but five cents, irrespective of distance. No time is wasted at the station exits in collecting tickets, which as soon as they are taken are dropped into a glass box under the eye of an inspector at the platform entrance. The New York Elevated is an improvement on its antithesis, the Underground Railway of London, It runs in daylight instead of through tunnels filled with sulphurous fumes ; the trains are more frequent and the fares lower ; and to a stranger it affords an excellent means of seeing the outward aspect of the city. An elevated railway running down the Edgware Road through Oxford Street and Holborn to the City, with a A City OF Perpetual Motion. 39 branch line to Charing Cross by way of Regent Street, would be a boon to London, and one that perhaps some day may be granted. The harbour of New York is protected from the Atlantic by Long Island, which lies like some huge whale stranded on the coast of Connecticut, with its head at the mouth of the Hudson. A narrow sound, wrongly called the East River, separates the island from the mainland, and on the island in the channel are placed those institutions which are usually seen outside the limits of a crowded city. Penitentiaries, Asylums, Hospitals, Almshouses, and the like, here find an appro- priate site apart from the hive on the mainland. At the northern end of the passage was Hell Gate, a cluster of rocks which greatly endangered navigation, but mining on an enormous scale has lately removed the obstruc- tion. When many miles of galleries had been excavated, and the honeycombed rock had been filled with ex- plosives, a little child touched an electric key and the terror vanished away. Long Island is the popular playground of New York. It contains the city's Gravesend and Margate, but not its Brighton, although one of the seaside resorts bears that name. Coney Island, detached 'from Long Island by a narrow creek, is the most frequented bathing place. The water along the shore is shallow, and a reef breaks the full force of the ocean waves and forms a quiet lagoon. The three chief resorts are West Brighton, Brighton Beach and Manhattan Beach ; and each of these ministers to the amusement of a different class. Though lying side by side, they have as little to do with one another as possible. The common people who come down to West lirighton cannot stroll on to the other resorts at their pleasure. A palisade running 40 The Modern Odyssey. down into the water separates Brighton Beach from Manhattan Beach, and the only means of access from the former to the latter is a short line of railway built on piles. Each has independent railway communication with Brooklyn. Manhattan Beach exists for the classes, West Brighton for the masses ; while Brighton Beach occupies a middle position. The first object which catches the eye at West Brighton is an hotel built in the form of an elephant ; and this also is often the first object distinctly seen on shore at the end of a voyage across the Atlantic. The legs contain the stairs, and the flanks are pierced with windows ; and from this the character of the place may be inferred. It exists for those who require a stimulating and violent form of relaxation, and for whom the usual attractions of a sea- side place do not suffice. The New Yorker is gratified by being able to feed and to lodge within the simulated carcase of a huge beast. Close by stands an iron tower three hundred feet in height, giving an extensive view over sea and land ; and there is a merry-go-round which revolves faster than any other on the continent. But the unique feature of West Brighton is a wooden cow w^hich gives milk through a tap placed in the proper place. A traveller from Europe who happened to be wrecked upon the shore of Coney Island would at first have difficulty in conjecturing by what kiitd of human beings it was inhabited, and, if he judged from appearances, he would probably come to the conclusion that the natives were descendants of some race of giants deficient in intellectual resources. In his love for the grotesque the lower-class American has much in common with a Pacific Islander. Brighton Beach closely adjoins West Brighton, and is reached by a drive which for some reason or A City of Perpetual Motion. 41 other is called the Concourse. Here the amusements are of a somewhat higher class, but are deficient in variety : to have one's photograph taken cheaply, to listen to music, and to eat clam chowder, is the extent of them. The place is no more than a large hotel with a wooden promenade in front of it. It hap- pened lately that the encroachment of the Atlantic endangered the safety of the hotel, which was- with- out delay placed upon wheels and drawn inland by locomotives. Manhattan Beach, half a mile east of Brighton Beach, is for persons of some degree of culture. It consists of a large hotel with gardens and bathing lodges attached. The short line of railway, by which alone it is accessible from West Brighton and Brighton Beach, acts as a filter to exclude the dregs of the mob, and keeps it select. The space between the hotel piazza and the shore has been laid out as a garden, in which the turf is always green and the flowers are always bright, and an idle hour or two may be agreeably spent in listening to the excellent orchestra in the music rotunda. But even with the comparative repose of Manhattan Beach to act as a corrective of the barbarous, vulgar, rude and grotesque display of West Brighton, Coney Island does not leave a pleasant impression, and few persons would care to revisit it. It is a spot where a city in a hurry undergoes a feverish spasm of enjoyment. There is nothing re- sembling it to be seen in Europe. An elephant hotel and a wooden cow yielding milk through a tap would be jeered at even in Rosherville. In justice to Coney Island, it must be acknowledged that it is not a rowdy place. The crowds who visit it during the summer are well conducted. It seems as if the desire to contemplate grotesque objects and the enjoyment of rude pleasures have taken the place of Anglo-Sa.xon riotous instincts in 42 The Modern Odyssey. the American people. Every nation requires a safety valve for the discharge of the turbulent elements of its nature, and there is no nation which makes use of one with less explosion, or which behaves on most occasions with more self-control, than the American. Whether this is in consequence of or in spite of the large measure of personal liberty entrusted to each individual, is a question not easily answered. If a New York popular resort is a place that depresses rather than exhilarates, there are not a few attractive and quiet spots within reach of the Great City. He who now writes these lines will not soon forget some delightful days spent in a certain villa at Marmaroneck. The little town is a score of miles from New York, on the northern shore of Long Island Sound, where a narrow tongue of land stretches out into the water, and encloses a creek which is crossed by a causeway. Here the tide ebbs and flows through the ruins of an old tide-mill. A few villas stand upon the rocky shore, so close to the water that at night the little waves seem to be plashing against the piazza; tiny bays and slender promontories line the strand, where seaweed and coarse grass grow almost side by side ; and as the tide falls a few islets are uncovered, and the sun at noon sparkles on the quartz of the crags. After a week sj^ent in the City of Perpetual Motion, with voices everywhere crying out " Move on ! Move on ! " it seemed like paradise to be sitting under the shade of trees at Marmaroneck, fanned by a gentle breeze that scarcely filled the white sails of the drifting schooners in the Sound. The low hills of Long Island rose on the further shore of the calm haven ; all the din of America was hushed ; and when the sun sank into the west the surface of the water was covered with a lovely tinge of red, and the rising moon gave the finishing touch of repose to the scene. Not a sound struck the car, except the dull thud A City of Perpetual Motiox. 43 of paddles far away, or the rattle of the oars of the little boat that was exploring the sequestered bays and inlets; and when the serene and balmy night overspread the sky, it proved, in the most delightful manner, that peace had not yet been driven out of America, and that there was at least one oasis of rest in the land of turmoil. CHAPTER IV. THROUGH NINE STATES TO CHICAGO. There are no railways in the United States. This apparently paradoxical assertion is explained by the difference between English and American terminology of travel by land. Though it is perfectly true that there are no railways in the United States, there are, neverthe- less, more than one hundred thousand miles of railroads: the older word which has become obsolete in the land of its mintage being retained in full use in the newer country. There are no Booking Offices, but there is a sufficiency of Ticket Offices ; the former inaccurate expression, a relic of the coaching days when travellers' names were entered in a book, having given place to the latter. There are no guards in the trains, though in the wilder and more un- settled States protective services are no less necessary than they were in Great Britain when the main roads were infested by highwaymen ; but each train, like each omnibus in London, is in charge of a conductor. The trains are never " punctual," but they arc frequently " on time." No time-tables are issued ; but ornamental folders, well printed on good paper, and containing maps ingeni- ously, if not ingenuously, designed, so as to make it appear that the company's line is the shortest distance between the chief points to which it runs, arc distributed gra- tuitously. Tickets are not only transferable, but a con- siderable business is done in them by ticket agents. To Through Nine States to Chicago. 45 " stop over " is to break the journey on the way; a return ticket is styled a "round trip;" and an "air line" is not a new kind of track which requires no earthly foundation for the permanent way, but merely the shortest possible route between two places. The great ambition, the final objective point of all the important railroads which have a terminus on the Atlantic seaboard, is to get to Chicago, directly if possible ; but, if not, by some means or other. The Hudson separates the State of New York from the State of New Jersey, and the city of New York from its suburb Jersey City. Here the river is about a mile in width, and each bank is lined with piers jutting out into the stream, which is alive with traffic both by night and by day. The Thames is a comparatively un- frequented river when compared with the Hudson. As New York, the commercial metropolis of America, is cut off by the Hudson from all but six of the forty and more States of the Union, the railways from the south and west terminate on the right bank of the river ; and Jersey City, containing as large a population as Sunderland or Lei- cester, is in fact a huge railway terminus and dockyard. Each State is governed by a different code of laws, and among the statutes still in force in New Jersey is one that will give peculiar satisfaction to a confirmed misogynist. It is to this effect : — " All women who betray into matrimony [sic] any of his Majesty's subjects by virtue of scents, cosmetics, artificial teeth, false hair, or high-heeled shoes, shall incur the pcnalt}' of the law now in force against witch- craft and like misdemeanours." The law was passed in the last ccntur)-, while New Jerse\- was still a colon)- of Great Britain. It has never been repealed, and though not enforced, it is not obso- lete. A male traxcllcr can therefore cross the Hudson 46 The Modern Odyssey. into New Jersey with a comfortable feeling that in this State, if nowhere else, he is protected against the wiles of the unscrupulous sex, and that he must go to America to find the weak fully protected against the strong by legislation. The distance between New York and Philadelphia is ninety miles, and the excellent express trains of the Pennsylvania railroad cover it in two hours. The scenery of New Jersey had at one time some pastoral and wood- land beauty, but this has disappeared, and the existing characteristics of the landscape are a profusion of small trees planted over a flat country, variegated with ragged wire fences, telegraph poles, wooden houses and shanties, some of them covered with roses, others with advertise- ments of liver pills. An excellent dinner, beginning \\\\\\ pate de foie gras and ending with strawberries and cream, is served in the dining car, which is now an integral part of all through trains to the West. The kindly Quakers who, under the leadership of Penn, emigrated to the banks of the Delaware, and purchased from the Indians a site for a town, to which they gave a name indicative of the principles of their religion, accomplished more than any other founders of cities had hitherto done ; for Philadelphia, although it has recently been outstripped by Chicago, was the first city in the world to attain a population not far short of 'a million before the bi-ccntenary of its foundation. It lies on the right bank of the Delaware, a few miles above the junction of that river with the Schuylkill. None of the streets are remarkably handsome, but, if two centuries can constitute antiquity, the city is interesting from an antiquarian point of view. The old red-brick houses of the last century, which are intimately interwoven with Through Nine States to Chicago. 47 the history of the country, give a staid and sober appear- ance, very uncommon in America, to the thoroughfares. Independence Hall, in which the Declaration of In- dependence was adopted, is the most fondly cherished edifice in America. It is now used as a museum of the properties of that drama, and the revolutionary relics, pictures, and documents are arranged as far as possible in the positions which they occupied in the rooms when the first American Congress met within the walls. It is hard to find history in America, but the Americans are careful to preserve the rare plant from extinction. The coast of New Jersey is a popular resort during the summer, and the low shore extending from Sandy Hook to the mouth of the Delaware is lined with bathing towns. The places towards the north of the State are visited chiefly by New Yorkers, and what Long Branch is to New York, Cape May is to Philadel- phia and Baltimore. It is a watering place named after the adjacent promontory, which encloses Delaware Bay and lies open to the Atlantic about eighty miles distant from Philadelphia. An American usually uses the word Ocean where an Englishman would speak of the sea-side, and talks grandly of his excursion to some obscure village washed by muddy waves as a trip to the Ocean. A detour to Cape May makes a pleasant break in the long journey from New York to Chicago. The railway starts from Camden, a suburb of Philadelphia on the further side of the Delaware, and passes through a flat but rather pleasing district, thickl\- wooded in places. Fields covered with handsome plants of Indian corn, or with tomato bushes red with fruit, border the track, and though the line is single, no time is wasted on the journey. Whether or no Ca[:)C May is a pleasant place depends less upon social conditions than upon the direction of 4^ The Modern Odyssey. the wind. When the wind is from the sea it is a delight- ful spot ; and then to feel the fresh ocean breeze fanning the jaded land, to hear the mutter of the Atlantic surf on the sands at night, and to listen to the chirp of the crickets and katydids in the grass, are sensations as agreeable in their own way as any that can be en- gendered elsewhere. If, on the other hand, the wind is from the land, the mosquitoes, who are ever on the look- out for a change in diet and are as bloodthirsty as any Indian tribe, will come down with the western breeze from the creeks and marshes and pounce upon the new- comer, and make him declare that Cape May is the most detestable place in America. The beach of Cape May is more than five miles in length. On a summer morning hundreds of grown-up people are seen disporting themselves by the margin of the ocean and frolicking like children on the sands. In England a sea bath is considered to be a ceremony that must be performed shyly and coyly : a primitive struc- ture resembling the Noah's Ark of the toy-shops, is led down to the water's edge, and the bathers (looking half- ashamed of themselves) carefully descend the steps into the waves. At Cape May every one performs his or her maritime ablutions in full gaze of the public, who mix freely in the throng. The sight of America playing at water-babies is one that can only be seen to perfection on the coast of New Jersey. There arc two Baltimores mentioned in the Gazetteers, but few people ha\c heard of the older Baltimore, the little Irish village which is the last inhabited place seen by the Atlantic steamers on the outward vo}'age. From it the Maryland Baltimore, a city larger than Sheffield, derives its name, through an Irish peer who founded a colony in America. Baltimore is quieter, cleaner, and more ordcrl)- than the great northern cities. It has Through Nine States to Chicago. 49 a more comfortable and homelike appearance ; the streets and side-walks are well paved, and the houses are handsome. In the artisans' quarters the neatness and substantial look of the houses is a striking contrast to the corresponding parts of New York. Mount Vernon, a hill in the heart of the city, is occupied by a small public garden, shaded by trees and kept green by fountains. A monument to Washington in the centre has little merit, as the absence of entasis in the shaft gives it a harsh appearance. White marble buildings, very elaborately decorated churches, and fine private mansions, fill the sides of the square, which, inasmuch as it stands at a higher elevation than the rest of the city, affords a good view of the celebrated monu- ments and public edifices of Baltimore. Eutaw Place would be an ornament to any city on the Continent of Europe. It is a broad avenue with gardens running down the centre line, and flanked on each side by houses of moderate size, built of red brick faced with white stone, and it is more pleasing to the eye than any street in New York or Philadelphia. In Baltimore leisure has not been wholly squeezed out of existence, and some of the conveniences of life are permitted to thrive. The roads leading out of the city are excellent, especially the old western turnpike highway. It is composed of crushed oyster-shells, a material which affords a luxury not often met with in the United States — a clean and even road-bed. It runs for some miles through dense woods, and at a very short distance from the city all signs of habitation disappear. Thick hedges, an unusual feature in America, are seen ; and country houses in the rear of parks are passed at intervals. The entrance gates are commonly fitted with a contrivance by means of which the carriage wheels pressing down a lever open them mechanically. E 50 The Modern Odyssey. The English traveller notices with pleasure that cricket has taken root in Baltimore. At Mount Washington, a {e\w miles west of the city, a meadow in a little valley has been converted into a cricket field. It is a charming spot sheltered by green hillsides, and the exotic pastime appears to flourish on the strange soil. No traveller ever leaves Baltimore without wishing to return to it. Many other American cities are more astonishing, more luxurious, and more thriving ; but few of them are so pleasing. It is hard to say exactly what is its peculiar charm. It may be the place itself; it may be the people ; it may be the clear skies and bright sunshine of Maryland ; but, whatever it be, the namesake of the little Irish village is one of the pleasantest places in America, and the days spent in it are marked with a white stone. When the American colonies had attained their freedom, it was necessary to establish a metropolis for the new nation. The mutual jealousy of the States stood in the way of any existing city being chosen, and with a becoming instinct, a site was selected on the banks of the Potomac near the birthplace and the home of the statesman who had brought the rebellion to a successful issue, and the Indian village of Conocoheague was raised to the rank of the capital of the United States by the title of the City of Washington. It is, however, easier to found a city than to ensure its development, and even in America a city's growth can- not be artificially stimulated by social fertilisers. A few wooden shanties built by a handful of pioneers who chance to settle upon the shores of a lake or the banks of a river may in time attract a population of half a million. Within the memory of living persons, Fort Dearborn, on Lake Michigan, contained scarcely one Through Nine States to Chicago. 51 hundred inhabitants, who ran the risk of being scalped every time they ventured outside its precincts. Pork and wheat have converted Fort Dearborn into Chicago. In the early years of the century there was a small trading post at the confluence of the Missouri and the Mississippi. Every English county could boast fifty villages more populous ; but now St. Louis contains more inhabitants than Leeds. Whatever may be the cause — whether it be the blighting presence of the American Congress in session for several months in each year within its boundaries, or the savage nature of the mosquito of the Potomac — the maturity of Washington has been long delayed. It has sulked and lagged behind unaccountably ; and its growth, in view of all the agencies at work, has been comparatively slow. No doubt it has steadily increased in size, but there has been no sudden expansion such as the founders had too hastily anticipated. It was laid out upon a scale so magnificent that at the present time, in the ninth decade of its existence, it is not likely for many years to fill the area assigned to it. An American writer has styled Washington a Philadelphia griddled across a Versailles, which is not complimentary to Versailles. It is included in the long list of capitals in various parts of the world which have been occupied or taken during the present century by British troops. The streets are laid out in rectangular blocks, crossed by avenues radiating from several centres, of which the chief are the Capitol and the White House ; and thus whenever the American citizen walks abroad he is constantly reminded of the Legislative and Executive authorities of his country, which, though deriving their power from the same source, the will of the people, are not seldom at variance. The streets running cast and west are distinguished by letters, while those E 2 52 The Modern Odyssey. running north and south are numbered. The intersect- ing avenues are named after the various States of the Union. Although Washington is a well-planned city, its appearance, except in certain portions of the residential quarter, is poor. Pennsylvania Avenue, a wide thorough- fare over a mile in length, extending from the Capitol to the White House, is unfinished and lacking in uni- formity. In one place a warehouse of six stories stands next to the wooden hovel of a Chinese laundryman. The profile of the roofs is irregular, the surface of the road is uneven, the side-walks are ill-paved, and, though the street is at once the Bond Street and the Piccadilly of Washington, the shops are inferior. The Capitol is a noble and splendid edifice. Its design is so harmonious and well-balanced that no single detail of the pile unduly attracts the eye, which, in common with a few of the cathedrals of Europe, it charms with an impression of unity and repose ; and although half-finished blocks and an incomplete terrace lie almost under its shadow, it is hard to find any fault in the exterior of the magnificent range of white marble and freestone. The interior is not so satisfactor}'. In spite of marble corridors and stairways, bronze doors from Munich, alti rclicvi and frescoes from Italy, pictures and statues by Italian artists, and costly decorations and l)ainted walls and ceilings, something of dignity and grandeur is lacking in the general effect. The halls and lobbies savour of the palatial hotel or restaurant. The Capitol is placed on an eminence at a distance of over a mile from the banks of the Potomac, A belt of land extending from the terrace to the river has been partially reserved for public purposes. Probably the intention of the founders of the city was that it should be wholly so reserved ; but the utilitarian destiny ot Through Nine States to Chicago. 53 America interposed its veto. There are, it is true, gardens and public places on the belt ; but a railway has wriggled in between them, the shunting of trains goes on in the midst, and the long, plain roof of the terminus divides the space, as seen from the terrace, into two portions. A line of telegraph and telephone wires, sup- ported on untrimmed poles, passes down an avenue of fine young trees, and the handsome Smithsonian In- stitute on one side is balanced by a massive pile of timber on the other. The Washington Monument stands in a small wilderness close to the river. It is a simple and effective obelisk of white marble, and if it were placed on the Thames Embankment the apex would stand at a higher level than two-thirds of Eng- land. It has lately been deposed from its position as the loftiest structure in the world by the Eiffel Tower. At the foot of a hanging wood on the Virginian shore the Potomac bends round from the north, and grows wider as it flows over the shallows in front of the city. On the crest of the hill overlooking the river from the south stands Arlington, a plainly built house with a romantic history. The ground falls steeply from the terrace to the Potomac, whose lustrous expanse is seen over the trees on the hillside, and the Monument and the Capitol gleam in the sunshine beyond. There arc few scenes so full of variety and charm as a city lying under a cloudless sky, with the red foliage of the American autumn in the foreground, and the broadened reach of a calmly flowing river in the middle distance. Arlington lies in the State of Virginia, within a short distance of Washington. The Potomac is crossed by a wooden bridge, whence a rough but pretty road leads to the entrance gates of the park, and a winding drive through the trees on the hillside ascends to a mansion which, hardly a generation ago, was the country scat of 54 The Modern Odyssey. a Virginian gentleman whose name stands out with almost solitary lustre in the dark pages of the history of the Confederacy. When the last act of the drama was played at Appomattox, Robert Lee, the champion of the South, emerged from the conflict with more military reputation than his conquerors; and even his enemies have learnt to respect his memory. But Arlington had passed away from him, and at the conclusion of the war it was con- verted into a national cemetery. The bones of soldiers — and also, it is said, of other animals — were collected from a hundred battle-fields, on many of which Lee had been victorious, and buried again on the slopes of Arlington and in the gardens where his children used to play. Of the fifteen thousand graves lying in groups scattered over the park, the majority are nameless, and bear only a number for reference. Near the house, and in an enclosure containing the last resting-place of the Northern chiefs who perished by land and sea, stands a rostrum, from which commemorative speeches are delivered on De- coration Day. A curious vein of romance traverses the matter-of-fact strata of the American character, and is especially noticeable in the veneration paid to the dead. On the last day of May pilgrims from all parts of the Union bring flowers to deck the graves of the fallen at Arlington. On one occasion the only undecorated tombs were those of the few Southern soldiers who lie there. When the sun rose next morning — so the story goes — it was found that the night wind had stolen some of the flowers which had been so partially bestowed, and had laid them gently on the graves of the poor out- casts. There could not be a fitter subject for a romance than Arlington, where all the materials for a transatlantic Through Nine States to Chicago. 55 Woodstock or Waverley are lying ready to be fashioned by the hand of an American Walter Scott. Many towns and cities in the United States are named after a former President, but, with the excep- tion of Washington, none of them has emerged from obscurity. It would seem that the Chief Magistrates of the Republic have a blighting influence on the places which bear their names, and that the latter have as much difficulty in retaining the notice of the community as the former when their brief term of office has expired. The term " extinct volcano," which was once applied by a great English statesman to a political opponent, is still more applicable to an ex-President of the United States, who after discharging for the space of a few years lava and asphyxiating vapour in the form of presidential messages and vetoes, is suddenly quenched, and stands inert and disregarded by all save occasional students of political geology. Cleveland, a populous city in the State of Ohio, is not an exception to the rule, as it existed under its present appellation long before Grover Cleveland entered the White House. Every large city in America has an alias ; and Cleveland is also known as the Forest City, not on account of its proximity to a forest, but from the trees which have been liberally planted in the streets, though hardly to an extent sufficient to justify the somewhat extravagant title. Cleveland lies on the southern shore of Lake Erie, at the mouth of the river Cuyahoga. It is in some respects a handsome city, but the frontage on the lake shore is occupied by the railwaj's and the harbour, while the landward side is wholly taken up with oil refineries, which, when the wind blows from the south, waft the perfume of the petroleum into every part. Euclid Avenue 56 The Modern Odyssey. is reputed to be the most beautiful residential thorough- fare in the United States, and its only plain feature is its name. Most of the houses are detached, and surrounded by lawns and gardens reaching down to the side-walks. The general absence of hedges, fences, and walls between the houses and the roadway gives a spacious and hos- pitable appearance to the i\ venue. An Englishman's house is his castle, and frequently his hermitage. An American interposes as few obstacles as he can to the ingress of his friends. What he loses in privacy he regains in social en- joyment. The cool green lawns, the verandahs, the bright- coloured rocking-chairs hospitably placed on the doorstep, seem to invite every passer-by to walk in and make him- self at home. The carriage road and the side-walks are moreover maintained in excellent order. Euclid Avenue is a street of which any city might be proud. It is hand- some and gay, and well ordered ; and no fault could be found with it except the fashion of stationing artificial dogs upon the lawns. An iron hound reposing for ever on the turf is not in accordance with the fitness of things. Cleveland possesses two remarkable monuments. One is the only existing monument on which the defeat of a British fleet is recorded. A statue of Commodore Perry, the victorious commander in the battle of Lake Erie, stands in Monumental Park in the heart of the city. The familiar sparrows of the place perch upon the sword-hilt ; and every Englishman, though many cannot do so, should look upon the effigy without chagrin. The monument to President Garfield, the second Chief Citizen of the Republic who suffered a fate supposed to be reserved for despotic monarchs, stands outside the city in Lake View Cemetery. It is a lofty tower, resembling a windmill without sails, and it is altogether unworthy of the dead. Through Nine States to Chicago. 57 The first sight of one of the great American lakes is awaited with interest, but they differ little from the sea in appearance. The colour is the same, and when the opposite coast is beneath the horizon the deficiency of breadth does not destroy the illusion. No one could tell that the waves breaking at the foot of the low cliffs of Ohio had not a fetch of a thousand miles, and whether the spectator looks across the waters from the shore of the Atlantic or from the shore of Lake Erie no land can be seen, and one surface is seemingly as boundless as the other. Only the absence of fully rigged ships indi- cates that the Forest City is not a seaport having access to all the oceans, for two piers run out from the mouth of the Cuyahoga, and a breakwater outside encloses a harbour of refuge. The shore maintains its uniformity of direction on either side, and shows no sign of trending round towards the north to enclose the waters of the lake. The more direct way of reaching Chicago from the Forest City of Ohio is by railway throughout ; but if a detour is made across the lake to Detroit, a pleasant voyage and a glimpse of the straits connecting Lakes Huron and Erie will be cheaply purchased at the cost of a few hours' delay. A clean, comfortable, and well- furnished steamer plies between Cleveland and Detroit. As her paddles begin to churn the Cu\-ahoga at the wharf the odour of the petroleum, which is largely inter- mingled with the river water, becomes more pungent, and is discernible until the vessel has left the harbour. On a moonlight night the voyage of six to eight hours across the lake is especially delightful, and at any time except when the wind is blowing strongly from the north it is preferable to a night journey by railway. The lights of Cleveland group themselves above the 58 The Modern Odyssey. shore, and gradually come nearer together as the ship recedes from the coast. The red and white flashing lights on the pier-head are soon hidden by the horizon, but the electric sparks blazing on tall standards above the trees and roofs remain in view long after the other lights have disappeared. The city of Detroit stands upon the western shore of the river which under various appellations separates the Eastern States from Canada. Its identity and con- tinuity are destroyed by the great lakes which are threaded on to it, and lower down in its course it is called the Niagara and the St. Lawrence. The Detroit River, as well as many of the islands and promontories, testify with their names to the zeal of the French missionary explorers of the i/th century, by whom not only the great lakes were discovered, but also the course of the great rivers falling into the Gulf of Mexico. A chain of French names extends from Superior to New Orleans, but except in the southern links the nation itself has disappeared. The Germans at the pre- sent time form a considerable element in the population of Detroit. The difference between the levels of Huron and Erie is ten feet, and the current at Detroit is very swift ; and although, moreover, the river is navigable only during eight months of the year, yet it conveys an amount of tonnage greater by three millions than the combined foreign and coastwise shipping of London and Liver- pool. The water is blue-grey in colour, and the red buildings of Detroit appear to advantage above it when seen from the Canadian shore. A stroll through the streets while waiting for the Chicago train reveals the existence of an admirable municipal regulation that the occupier of any house in which a case of infectious disease has occurred shall notify the fact on a placard affixed to the door. Through Nine States to Chicago. 59 On the further bank of the river stands the Canadian town of Windsor, a primitive, unattractive place. If its life-blood were not constantly being sucked away by the prosperous American city, its situation might some day make it an important place. At present it is but a mean suburb of Detroit, which happens to be in British territory. The position of New York, with regard to Chicago, has made it possible to utilise Canada as a highway between those cities, and the route by way of Detroit through Ontario is shorter than some of the lines running wholly through the United States. The train from New York crosses into Canada at Niagara, and passes through British territory on to Windsor, where it is carried bodily across the river in a transport, and resumes its land journey in the State of Michigan with so little disturbance that a passenger might well fall asleep in Canada and not awake until long after the train had left the wharf at Detroit. The Customs examination is made in the baggage cars while the train is afloat, but luggage from United States' stations passes through Canada in bond. The line from Detroit to Chicago traverses a flat country, partly tilled, but generally covered with dense woods. The southern shore of Lake Michigan is skirted for some distance. It is low and sandy, and fringed with trees, in the openings of which are seen glimpses of a blue sheet of water stretching far away to the north. Those travellers who have chanced to sec the lake not only by day, but also on a summer's night under the blaze of almost continuous lightning, when the surface is illumined and the sands of the shore stand white in the gaps, and the landscape is revealed for a moment like a phantom out of the darkness by a flash so transient that the trees hurrying by seem to be standing still, will not soon fori^ct the siLrht. 6o The Modern Odyssey. All the great railways running westward from New York look upon Chicago as their objective point, and there are in consequence several routes by which the chief city of the Central States can be reached from the Atlantic seaboard. To have the power of running solid trains from the banks of the Hudson or the Delaware to the western shore of Lake Michigan is the ambition of half a dozen lines. The rivalry of the companies has not, however, lowered the time of the journey to the irreducible minimum, and even the fastest trains would not pass muster as expresses in England. The greater part of the track on each road is single, and high speeds are impracticable. Five or more lines enter Chicago from the east, all of them on single tracks. In a country where competition was not so keen, and where railways did not regard one another as two hostile States regard each other in Europe, arrangements would have been made for the construction of a double track, which could accommodate at least as much traffic as five or six single tracks, to be used in common by all the railways ap- proaching Chicago from the east ; but, instead of this obvious expedient, each line has built an insufficient and imperfect road of its own. Yet the balance of safety is possibly on the side of the existing method of independ- ent access ; for the relations between rival companies in the United States are sometimes so tightly strained that there is no saying what might not happen if the trains of competing lines approached and quitted the goal of their ambition on the same pair of tracks. Chicago has many claims to distinction. It is the largest sexagenarian city in the world ; it has been devastated by the most destructive fire that ever raged, in which ^40,000,000 of property was destroyed, and which broke many of the chief insurance companies of America. Yet in a {q\v years, in spite of another Through Nine States to Chicago. 6i conflagration, the elasticity of the corn and pork trade had restored to it more than its former prosperity, and at the present time it wears no sign of the disaster. In each year within its boundaries several millions of pigs utter their last grunt, and are converted into pork without delay. Finally, it shares with Timbuctoo the honour of having been once chosen as the subject of a Cambridge Prize Poem, on which occasion the successful competitor was the only bard who had had the self-control to avoid using the simile of the Phoenix in connection with the rebuilding of the city after the great fire. Chicago is a typical modern American city. The greater portion of it has been reconstructed since the conflagration of 1871, and it therefore embodies all the most recent developments of American ideas and methods. It is, in fact, a city not twenty years old, but containing a million inhabitants. The value of time in Chicago may be estimated by the fact that two adjacent streets are connected by tunnels with the corresponding sections lying on the farther side of the river. In any other country one tunnel would have been considered sufficient to accommodate the traffic of both streets, especially as bridges span the river within a short distance both above and below. In the space of a very few hundred yards two bridges and two tunnels cross the stream. CHAPTER V. THE NIAGARA SHOW. It is probably true that the majority of foreign travellers in America go to Niagara reluctantly, and more for the sake of saving their own reputation than of deriving any pleasurable sensation from the contemplation of the scene. No one could bear up against the accusation that he had willingly passed it by, and the cataract is in consequence visited by all, and revisited by few. The feeling of re- sentment engendered by the enforced pilgrimage relieves itself in disparagement. By almost general consent, Nia- gara has been pronounced disappointing. As a majesti.c and awe-inspiring sight, it is certainly inferior to an Atlantic gale pursuing and tossing a ship of a myriad of tons like a straw in a millstream. The notoriety of Niagara has apparently discounted its power of astonishing, and its environments are moreover unpleasing. The first European who saw it was doubtless bewildered with amaz.emcnt, and all his successors wish that they could have seen it as he did, before the mischievous Anglo-Saxon had settled upon its banks. In the town of Niagara on the American, and in Clifton on the Canadian side, there is scarcely a building which is not a disfigurement to the scene. A suspension bridge crosses the gorge below the cataract: mills taking their waters from the rapids above stand upon the brink of the precipice overhanging the lower The Niagara Show. 63 stream : a switchback occupies a commanding position on the Canadian side: an incHned railway on the Ameri- can side leads down from the edge of the Falls to the rocks washed by the spray of the cataract. Outdoor photographers tout for patronage, and offer as a back- ground the curtain of the descending waters. Wooden shanties and other structures of various degrees of plain- ness have been placed in all possible positions, and on an islet in the rapids stands a board bearing the in- scription " Go East by Erie Railroad." The State of New York and the Canadian Govern- ment have lately taken steps to end the former scandal of Niagara, and now each side of the Falls is reserved as a public park. A few years ago scarcely any part could be visited without payment of a fee or toll, but now every spot is open free to all. The paper-mill which once stood above the cataract between Goat Island and the Ameri- can shore has been removed, and it is no longer necessary to pay a toll of 50 cents to cross the bridge over the rapids. The payment of fees at every point no doubt tended to draw out any latent disappointment that might have been felt with Niagara, and now that these are abolished the cataract will have a chance of taking its place among the wonders of the world ; for there are persons so constituted that they would consider a sight of the most lovely sunset that ever was seen upon the Indian Ocean dearly purchased at sixpence. If the clear- ing process could proceed a step further, and destroy and obliterate everything that has been erected within sight of the Falls during the last century, Niagara would no longer be in danger of being regarded as a colossal water engine which discharges so many million tons every minute into Lake Ontario and is capable of supplying the entire continent with motive power. A very great advance has been made in a few years : Nature, after 64 The Modern Odyssey. long eclipse, has been suffered to emerge a little into view ; and, though no future traveller will see Niagara as the Indian saw it two centuries ago, perhaps the summit level of vulgarisation has been attained, and the pert civilisation of America will have the grace not to put itself so much in evidence. The P'alls of Niagara, the most popular show in America, are the result of Lake Ontario lying more than three hundred feet below the level of Lake Erie. The descent is made in a distance of less than forty miles, but one half of it is accomplished in a single plunge over a ledge situated midway between the lakes. Goat Island stands on the brink of the cataract, like a mass of floatage that has been carried down by the rapids, and arrested ere it fell into the abyss. It separates the American from the Canadian Fall, and is reached by a bridge spanning a stream running at the rate of thirty miles an hour. The rapids pour down upon it, and as the water-level at a short distance above is higher than the island itself, the latter appears as though it must be in- evitably overwhelmed or thrust over the edge. The island is almost entirely covered with trees. Close beside it is the Luna islet, which derives its name from the lunar rainbows formed in the mist rising out of the abyss. On the other side are the Three Sisters Islets, lying in the rapids, and on the water's edge are many spots bearing the names of persons who have done brave or foolhardy acts in the presence of the cataract. Looking upwards and across from the shore of Goat Island an extraordinary scene of mad waters meets the eye. Rocks encumber the bed of the river, and the drainage of Michigan, Superior, Huron and Erie is struggling with them in a wild desire to reach the lower pool of Ontario. The corner of land at the western side of the The Niagara Show. 65 American Fall is called Prospect Park. A low wall has been built at the angle, with a parapet only a few feet from the shoulder of the cataract, and it is almost possible to put forth the hand and touch the water as it curls over the brink. The American Fall, being on the inner side of the river curve, is com- paratively shallow, and but a small proportion of the river is carried over it. The Horseshoe, or Canadian Fall, sends down a mass of water twenty feet in thick- ness, and is by far the most impressive sight of Niagara. The momentum of the stream carries the water over the brink in a grand curve which does not immediately break into foam, while elsewhere the white veil is formed almost at the edge. The actual spot of the plunge into the chasm below is for ever hidden by the impenetrable spray, from which a lighter and more tenuous mist, very lovely and ethereal, soars to heaven and mingles with the clouds ; and sometimes a column of mist, easily distinguishable from the established mist-veil, is seen rising suddenly to the shoulder of the cataract. The river below the Falls shows a tolerably smooth surface of almost pure white, slightly tinged with pale blue and green where it emerges from the cloud obscur- ing the caldron, but as the foam dissolves it gradually assumes a dark-blue colour beautifully streaked with white. From this comparatively quiet pool the river passes down through a deep gorge without disturbance for a few miles until the ravine changes its direction and is suddenly contracted. Here the rebellious stream, every drop of which in an instant is seized with a mad desire to wrangle and wrestle and struggle and quarrel with its neighbour, impinges violently against the side and forms the whirlpool ; where the water, in its wild efforts to free itself from restraint, is piled up to a height of thirty feet in the centre. Two F 65 The Modern Odyssey. uj^ly railway bridges span the ravine a short distance above the whirlpool, but though they mar the grandeur of the scene, one of them, under which a carriage road is suspended, affords the best position for gazing at the turmoil of the whirlpool and the gorge. The roar of Niagara is not so loud as might be expected. Its intensity depends on the direction of the wind and on the state of the atmosphere^ which act now as a sourdine and now as a swell upon the great diapason. The tremor produced by the fall of so many million tons of water into the chasm is distinctly per- ceptible in the houses of Niagara and Clifton. Niagara is a favourite place of retirement for newly married couples, and of the American visitors to the Falls a very large proportion will be brides and bride- grooms. There appears to be a feeling in America that the sight of angry waters is good for those who have lately entered the too often turbulent ocean of married life, and that the beauty of domestic felicity is more likely to be appreciated in the presence of such strife. Perhaps the custom may be accounted for in another way. Women in America are usually allowed to follow their own wishes whithersoever the latter may tend, and it is possible that it is they, rather than their humble servants the men, who are responsible for the conversion of Niagara into a honeymoon resort. An American woman is as restless as a swallow, and she instinctively llics to places where Nature also is restless. CHAPTER VI. A VOYAGE OX INLAND WATERS. FRO^[ Lcwiston, a little village lying on the United States' shore of the Niagara River, where the current, though swift, is sufficiently free from eddies and whirl- pools for safe navigation, a steamer runs across the head of Ontario to Toronto. No land is visible at first cither ahead or on the starboard beam, and there is nothing in the aspect of the lake to distinguish it from the open sea ; but soon after leaving the mouth of the Niagara a hill appears like a faint cloud upon the horizon, and in an hour the indications of a city show themselves above the water-line. Toronto lies on the shore of a bay formed by a tongue projecting into the lake. The promontory is low but pretty, and some- what Dutch in appearance. From Toronto to the St. Lawrence is a voyage of sixteen hours along the northern shore of the lake, during which the steamer calls occasionally at small towns bearing the familiar names of Scarborough, Whitby, and Newcastle. The steamer enters the St. Lawrence shortly after leaving Kingsttjn, and for some hours is threading her way through the Thousand Islands. The beauty of the scenery has been greatly over-praised, as is usually the case when American scenery is described by native writers, but it is certainly pleasing. The boat glides down through narrow channels in the midst of rocky F 2 6S The Modern Odyssey. isles and islets, most of which are covered with trees. Many of them are inhabited, some being in the pos- session of New York plutocrats, who on the St. Law- rence, if nowhere else, are enabled to live like Juan Fernandez in a tiny empire of their own. Here and there an entire islet is taken up by a large hotel and its appurtenances. The fishing is excellent, and no pleasanter retreat during an American summer could be desired. Little lighthouses, built on rocks only large enough for the keeper's cottage with its lantern rising out of the roof, are constantly passed. Private boat- sheds and bathing places are seen on the shore under the trees, and the wooden villas, as a rule, are not a disfigurement to the river. In autumn especially, when the first frosts have chilled the foliage and the leaves are yellow and red, the colouring upon the bright blue stream is very beautiful. But a journey through 1,692 islands, strewn over forty miles of narrow water, is necessarily deficient in variety, and when the steamer emerges upon the unencumbered stream most people will have had enough of them. The lower reaches of the St. Lawrence sometimes ex- pand into lakes, sometimes contract into rapids. The small, clean Canadian town of Prcscott is the terminus of the short railway connecting the St. Lawrence with Ottawa, and opposite to it is the attractive town of Ogdensburg, in the State of New York, which, at least across the broad river, appears to advantage. An Indian pilot takes charge of the wheel when the steamer is shooting the Rapids between Prescott and Montreal. The little village of Lachine, which is a few miles above Montreal, owes its name to a blunder of the ]<^rcnch missionaries who explored the country in the 16th century. Geographical science was at that time in its infancy. They knew that " the merry world was A Voyage on Inland Waters. 69 round," and that was almost all that they did know. When they came to the St. Lawrence, they imagined that they had reached China from the East, and the error was not discovered until they had called the place La Chine, which name survives to bear witness to their mistake. Here the Ottawa joins the St. Lawrence, but the dark waters of the former flow for some distance side by side with the more abundant stream, and the line of demarcation is distinctly visible as far as the rapids of Lachine, which blend the two rivers into in- dissoluble union. It might be supposed from the terms in which the guide-books describe the act of shooting the rapids of Lachine that it was as perilous a feat as shooting the whirlpool at Niagara. It would certainly be so if the graphic pictures of a vessel rushing down an incline of seething waters between beetling crags were accurate; but, in reality, it is quite possible for a not very observant traveller to fail to notice that he and his ship were in an unusual situation. The passage is performed twice a day by the steamers of the St. Lawrence. The vessel glides through a disturbed channel, and a rock appears above the surface on either side. The vertical descent is not very great, but the current is strong ; and the feat is chiefly remarkable, not because of its visible terrors, but as an admirable piece of steering, requiring great nerve and accuracy. If the tiller ropes gave way, or the en- gines failed at the critical moment, the result would be fatal. The observation most commonly heard as the vessel glides into calmer waters is, " When are we going to shoot the rapids ? " The distance between Montreal — the chief city though not the capital of Canada — and New York is about four hundred miles. The express, soon after leaving the mean terminus of the Grand Trunk Railway, bears away yo The Modern Odyssey. to the left, and enters the tubular bridge crossing the St. Lawrence. At this point the river is two miles wide, and the cars are buried in the iron tunnel for fully six minutes. The country between Montreal and the head of Lake Champlain is flat and unattractive ; but from Plattsburg, a port near the northern end of the lake, the greater part of the journey to New York can be made by water. The country traversed possesses not a little historical interest, as up to the time of the Civil War it was the battle-field of America. In the war of 1756, as well as in the Revolution and the war of 18 13, the shores of Lakes Champlain and George saw much of the strife. Beyond the headland which partly encloses the harbour of Plattsburg a British fleet was defeated more than three-quarters of a century ago. Champlain is a true lake, and not a sea in bondage, like Huron or Michigan ; for though in some places a water horizon only is visible to the north and south, yet the lake is narrow, and while a yacht could sail for a day without greatly altering her course, she would never be more than a few miles from land. The surface of the lake is usually tranquil, and its depth, amounting in some places to sixty fathoms, gives a pure tone to the colour of the water. Distant hills, islands of all sizes and shapes, hanging woods, open sheets of water, narrow channels and sounds, each tinted with a hue of its own, compose the picture ; and the towns and villages on the shore are seen at a distance sufficient to idealise the commonplace appearance of an American town. One side of the lake is sheltered by the wild Adirondacks, the other by the terraces of the green hills from which the State of Vermont derives its name. The jiurc, clear air induces very beautiful and delicate effects of light and shade. The hillsides on which the sun directly falls arc imbued with a purple tint, while those which face A Voyage ox Inland Waters. 71 towards the north arc a pale, smoky grey. Meadows gleaming in the sunlight slope down to the water, with a background of dark green on the higher land: a brilliant copse, clothed with the autumn tints of crimson and orange, intervenes between a pale blue sky and the steel- grey lake, the colour of which is in places transmuted by the reflection of the sky into an olive green : and as the •steamer glides past a promontory, the vivid hues con- trast with marvellous beauty with the subdued colouring of the more distant landscape. The Seven Years' War, as far as England was con- cerned in it, was fought out mainly in America ; and on the shores of Cham plain, in the heart of the Eastern States, is the hill which was the most important strategic position in a campaign between two adjoining European Powers. Fort Ticondcroga stood midway between the French colonies in Canada and the British colonics on the Atlantic, and immense sums were spent by each side in strengthening it. It was held by a British garrison until the close of the Revolutionary War, but it is now in ruins. History records no more curious changes than those which occurred during the third quarter of the iSth century. In the early years of that period England and I'Vance were contending for supremacy on the shores of Lakes Champlain and George, a struggle which resulted in France losing all her American possessions except her plantation at the mouth of the Mississippi. A {qw \-cars after, I^ngland was endeavouring to suppress a rebellion caused by her attempt to make her American colonies pay a share of the cost of delivering them from France. She failed to do so, ami was exi)elled from the English- speaking colonies ; while the settlements on the St. Law- rence, which had but lately come into her possession, and in which settlers of I-'rench nationality were an 72 The Modern Odyssey. overwhelming majority, remained contentedly loyal to her, though their fellow-countrymen in France were actively aiding the revolutionary party. That the last quarter of the i8th century should see England dis- possessed of the colonies which she had herself founded, yet retaining those of a rival European Power dissimilar in habits, language, and religion, was a solution of the American problem which no one would have thought possible in 1750; but such is the caprice of history. It is difficult to account for the persistent adherence of the French colonies to the hereditary foe of France, except on the supposition that either the lower orders at that time were deficient in patriotism, the sublimest form of selfishness, or that they had been so demoralised by centuries of Bourbon misrule that they gladly sub- mitted to any alien Government which treated them well* The water journey from Montreal to New York is broken at Ticonderoga by the neck of land which separates Lake Champlain from Lake George. It is hardly five miles in width, and the voyage is resumed at Baldwin, a port at the northern extremity of Lake George. To the Indians the lake was known by the name of Horicon, or the Silvery Waters, but it was re-named Lake George in honour of the Kitig by some unimaginative British officer during the Seven Years' War. Its waters have more than once been reddened by the blood of English soldiers, and in 1758 an army of 15,000 men traversed it from end to end in a flotilla of a thousand keels. The lake section of the journey from Montreal to Xcw York terminates at Caldwell, a village mainly composed of hotels, and thence to the Hudson another * It is a remarkable fact, which any traveller in the United States may verify, that the citizens of a rci)uMic are far more patriotic than the subjects of a monarchy, limited or absolute. A Voyage on Inland Waters. 73 land gap of seventy miles must be crossed by train. Only the first few miles are attractive, where the line, having quitted the lake shore, passes through a woodland belt clothed in all shades of red, carmine, brown, purple, and- yellow, and skirts a placid tarn into which the birches dip their boughs. The splendid autumn foliage of the Northern States of America is abso lutely the nK>st beautiful sight in ^ the world. \ Dark brown, purple, old gold, crimson, blood-red, orange and brick-red are but a few of the colours with which the maples deck themselves ; while the lingering greens, which the first frosts of September have not yet wholly destroyed, are mingled with all imaginable brilliant hues of yellow and carmine. The bronze and copper of the oak contrasts with the golden and amber brown of the chestnuts, with the rich verdure of the evergreen trees and with the fiery red of the maples, through which the sunlight streams and reaches the fallen leaves on the ground with ensanguined rays. There are whole breadths of hillside where the pre- dominating colour is crimson, yet every tree appears to wear a peculiar tint of its own. Some of the maples are still vividly green, with here and there a bright red branch, or it may be only a single leaf, while others 'are wholly a rosy gold. There is no limit to the variety of the hues. While the maple affects the bright colours when it puts off its summer vesture, the oak at the approach of winter clothes itself in a garment of sober madder-brown before shedding its leaves, and the pale yellow foliage of the white birch is seen soaring above a clump of dark green hemlock. The brilliancy of the colouring in the sunshine cannot be adequately described, and even when the sky is overcast the bright hues on the earth seem to supply the place of the sunshine, and the picture is almost as glowing as ever. It is 74 The Modern Odyssey. a rare delight to tread a carpet of golden leaves in avenues of crimson trees, and to gaze at bright colours on every side ; for where the trees are not, there are red shumac and purple dogwood, and fields littered with huge orange pumpkins. An autumn landscape in America is alone worth a voyage across the. Atlantic ; and if it were faithfully reproduced on canvas, with all its rich dyes, no one who had not seen the original would believe that Nature could array herself in such splendour. Nothing like it is ever witnessed in Europe or even in the tropics, and it can, in fact, occur only in a country where the alternations of climate are violent and extreme, and where the rich growths of a hot summer are suddenly chilled by the first frosts of the coming rigorous winter. Such is the September environment of a village in Massachusetts or Vermont. The famous City of Saratoga, one of the chief Vanity Fairs of America, lies on the route from Horicon to the Hudson. Here, as in Europe, the presence of mineral springs has been made an excuse for the assemblage of fashion. Saratoga is at the present day to America what in the last century Bath and Tunbridge Wells were to Great Britain, an asylum for the jaded ; and if cmnii has not yet established itself across the Atlantic as a national ailment, the liver reigns in its stead. There is no reason, except the medicinal springs, why Saratoga should be a place of popular resort, for it lies on a generally level country, and many other places excel it in beauty. The surrounding scenery is pleasing but no more. The streets are unkempt, but well shaded with trees. The springs are in Congress Park, a small public place in the heart of the town, laid out with terraces, gardens, ornamental water, drinking halls, band-stands, and a few pens of wild animals. The hotels are large and unsightly. Many of the private houses are excellent A Voyage o.v Inland Waters. 75 examples of domestic architecture, and in their way cannot be surpassed. But, on the whole, Saratoga does not appear to be a comfortable place. It is a Ramsgate or Margate frequented by American belles and American millionaires. It is a great al fresco hotel and little more. Dancing, (water-)drinking, and dressing are its chief occupations ; and when the season is over no country town in England is more dull. The hotels are closed, the streets are deserted, and then the poverty of the natural attractions of Saratoga becomes manifest. The undulating country between Saratoga and the Hudson is occupied by small and busy towns. The river Mohawk is crossed shortly before the train enters Albany, the capital of the State of New York, and almost the oldest city in the Eastern States. As in the case of the county tow^ns of Great Britain, so also the capital of an American State is often not the most populous place in it. The Legislature is, therefore, re- moved from the pernicious influence of the purely local politics of a large city. In a perfectly ordered com- munity the Legislature would meet in a wilderness ; but as this would be inconvenient, it is well to choose a small town for the place of assembly. Not that Albany is a small town, but it would take twelve Albanys at least to make up one New York, and therefore the intensity of the influence of local politics may be esti- mated to be less than one-twelfth. The voyage from Albany to Xew York occupies nine hours in those magnificent saloon steamers which have achieved a world-wide reputation. The upper reaches of the river are pretty, but not to be compared with Lakes Champlain and George, or even with the St. Lawrence. The surface is calm and bright. Low islands covered with grass stand in the wa}-, many of them having a lighthouse, or rather a lantern rising out ot 76 The Modern Odyssey. a cottage roof. The shores are greatly disfigured by ice stores and incUnes for hoisting the ice out of the water. Shortly before the steamer reaches the city of Hudson, the first view of the Kaatskills, or Wild Cat Mountains, is obtained. The range lies to the west of the river, beyond a flat belt ten miles in width. It is a striking and compact mass, smoky blue in colour, and, though hidden at one place by some intervening hills, it remains in sight for some hours. The Kaatskills, in the quaint and graphic language of America, are termed one of the " side shows " of the Hudson, and are much frequented. A white speck seen on the mountains is the Mountain House, a large hotel which offers to its visitors one of the finest views in America. It is reached from the Hudson by a short branch line, on which there is a station called Cairo. The sense of geographical unity is not acute in the United States. Not far from the Mountain House is a dingle or gorge which may be explored for twenty-five cents. A small stream runs through the ravine, but, as the water supply is insufficient to supply a constant cascade of sufficient volume, it is dammed at the upper end and turned on like a stage waterfall for the benefit of the twenty-five-cent visitors. In this simple manner the deficiencies of Nature are rectified. Below the city of Hudson the scenery changes ; the reaches of the river broaden, islands are less frequent The effects of light and shade upon the Hudson, its banks and its hills, are very beautiful. The whole colour of a landscape is often modified in a (ew minutes. Spots that were gleaming in the light are suddenly darkened, and hills that were pale are made purple. Part of a wood is a rich dark green where a passing cloud inter- cepts the sunshine, while the rest of it is a brilliant emerald. Here the region explored and colonised by A Voyage on Inland Waters. yy the Dutch is entered, but the names of a few towns and villages on the banks of the Hudson are almost the only relics of the nation which once was in a fair way to add America to the list of its colonial possessions. The sedate river, never hurrying to the ocean, but tranquilly pursuing its course, was more appropriately navigated by Hudson and his quaint galliots than by the steam- boats which now disturb its current. The sleep of Rip van Winkle was not sufficiently prolonged. If he could have seen a railway lining each bank, if he could have heard the whistle of the New York Central Lightning Express answered by the engine bell of the West Shore, while the Vibbard ox the Albany were rushing down the stream and overtaking a flotilla of twenty or more barges, he would have had still more reason for be- wilderment. A great American city is an unlovely thing, a village or town is a shabby ; but scattered at wide intervals over the United States are small settlements which leave nothing to be desired in the way of order, and in which the roads are well graded and properly tended, the public places neat and clean, and the impress of a regular mind evident. These oases are the military establishments of the United States, and, standing as they do in the midst of a rough-and-ready countr}-, they offer a welcome relief to the e}'e of a European traveller made giddy by the whirl and turmoil of the great machine which is called America. The Hudson has not been fortunate in the towns and cities which have been built upon its banks, and one of the noblest and stateliest rivers in the world resembles a handsome but badly dressed woman. One spot, however, upon its shores is not unworthy of its honourable position, namely. West Point, the Sandhurst as well as the Woolwich of the United States. It stands on the plateau of a rocky 78 The Modern Odyssey. promontory jutting out from the western bank a few miles down the ravine by which the river makes its way through the Highlands. The northward view from the West Point promontory is very fine. In the foreground densely wooded and rocky hills rise out of the water on either side. One of them, now called the Storm King, was formerly known by the name of Butterhill, a title which its swelling sides suggested to the fat and unimaginative Dutchmen of the 17th century. Here the stream impinges upon the side of the headland, and is deflected across to Constitution Island on the east shore ; the water is very blue, and is streaked with satin patches of calm where the wind coming down from the glens has not touched it, and the hills slanting from the river enclose a bright picture of the country above. Pollock's Island stands near the entrance of the ravine, with the gleaming city of Newburgh beyond it, and in the far distance the faint outline of the Kaatskills may be discerned. The hills for the most part are cleared only at their bases. Towards sunset, when the shadows have fallen over the plateau but have ni;t yet reached theeast shore, the contrast of light and shadow is very fine. The hills are darkened, but the further bank is still glowing in the sunshine, while the river remains almost as luminous as the sky above it. It is not in architecture that the merit of West Point lies, for all the buildings are of the American Gothic or the American Classic order. It is rather its superb situa- tion above the noble river, and the uncommon neatness and order of the whole place, which strike travellers so pleasantly. There is no din of traffic along bad roads, no shabby wooden houses, no shops vying with each other to attract attention, no promiscuous crowds rush- ing to and fro. Even the railway is kept out of sight in a tunnel runiu'ng under the plateau. The chief military A Voyage on Inland Wat/:rs. 79 institution of the United States is not the place where one would expect to find repose and quiet ; yet for the greater part of the day it is as peaceful as an English country village. The hush of it is weird. It is quite unique, and seems out of its element on the banks of the chief river and highway of the Eastern States. As a resting- place from which the Hudson may be contemplated at the most attractive part of its course, it is above praise. _Every traveller should halt for a day or two at West Point, and revel in its quiet, order, and natural beauty ; for there are few spots in the more densely populated States in which these qualities coexist. The military buildings and schools are placed by the side of a spacious parade ground on the plateau, and are not remarkable in any way. The artillery trophies of the United States army lie under the elms at the edge of the table-land. Quaint Spanish mortars, green with age, and siege guns marked with the arms of Bourbon kings, are reposing on the turf, many of them inscribed with names — such as El Titan, El Gabitan, or EI Ton- ante. The latter is a handsome piece, belonging to the period when art was applied to artillery; the chase is tastefully ornamented with Jlciir-de-iis, and the cascable is formed of a bunch of grapes. Close at hand are some French field pieces, brought over by La Fayette at the time of the Revolutionary War. Many of these also bear names, and the words Le Faun, La Choquantc, L'Anrorc, Gyges, and others, are still discernible at the touch-hole, as well as the motto Ultinui ratio rcguni. There are a icw British guns marked with the Ro)-al arms ; one of them, which bears the date 1744, with a ducal coronet and the letter M, was no doubt cast under the second Duke of Marlborough, at that time Master of the Ordnance. A link of the chain which was stretched aross the river to prevent the ascent of the 8o The Modern Odyssey. British gun-boats is also preserved. One or two cap- tured British colours are hung up in the chapel, the only place in the world in which such a trophy may be found. Half-way down the face of the northern slope is placed the siege battery of breechloading guns used for the instruction of the cadets. It stands immediately over the mouth of the tunnel, and as the railway runs across a shallow bend of the river towards the targets on the face of the opposite hill, the line and the range are almost parallel, and not very far apart. On the plateau is a field battery of antiquated type. The guns are dirty, and even a civilian notices the absence of the Woolwich polish and smartness. The signal-gun on the pier-head of an En- glish seaport is usually cleaner. All West Point — that is to say, the ladies and officers of the garrison, and a stray traveller or two from the hotel — assembles on the plateau at the time of evening parade. The band, headed by a druai-major whose busby and plumes are the only magnificent things in a somewhat plainly dressed army, strikes up ; and in presence of an unmounted colonel, who stands silent, motionless, and with folded arms, the battalion of cadets, in light blue coatees, cut after the fashion of the pre- Crimean period, goes through a {(^w movements with mechanical precision. In contrast with the excellence of the cadets' drill is the careless deportment of the sentries belonging to the infantry detachment which is stationed at West Point for duty. An American sentry lounges in front of his post, or often at a considerable distance from it, in a free-and-easy manner, sometimes turning round to see what is going on, sometimes taking a step or two backwards in zigzag. The soldiers at the guard-house may be seen lying in chairs outside the build- ing, reading newspapers or smoking pipes. The ways of A Voyage on Inland Waters. 8i an American Thomas Atkins would drive an English adjutant wild. In the evening, after sunset, perfect stillness reigns in the place. The lights of Newburgh glimmer faintly in the distance in the angle of the V formed by the hills sloping down to the water. Long lines of lights slowly ascending or descending the stream show that a train of barges is winding round the headland; the twilight falls upon the white sails of the schooners trying to beat to windward against the current, and Mount Taunus and the Storm King loom above the strand. All the sounds come from afar, and are mellowed by the distance ; the throb of the engines of the passing steamers is subdued, and even the rumble of a freight- train on the further shore does not strike unpleasantly upon the ear. After emerging from the gorge of the Highlands, the Hudson broadens out in many places to the width of a lake ; and the Tappan Zee is a wider sheet of water than any lake in Great Britain or Switzerland. Tarrytown, at its northern end, is said to have derived its name from the dilatory habits of the husbands of the place in former days. The most interesting feature of the lower Hudson is the Palisades, a cliff-line extending for many miles along the west shore between Yonkers and Hoboken. It is a range of natural columns rising out of the water to an elevation of two or three hundred feet. The lower portion is a steep slope formed by debris, and covered with trees ; but above this the precipice is absolutely perpendicular. Here Nature asserts herself with a last effort, for at the southern end of the Palisades the suburbs of Xcw York begin, and under the ver}- shadow of the lonely cliffs, on the summit of which not a sign of life appears, a sloop with a mainsail inscribed with the legend "Smoke Blackwell's Mixture" is usually cruising. The Hudson by night is more beautiful than the G 82 The Modern Odyssey. Hudson by day, because the darkness hides the warts and moles with which American civiHsation has dis- figured the fair banks of the river. The water is so calm that a rose would cover the mirrored image of the moon, and each bright star is reflected ; the village lights sparkle everywhere, and even the chirp of the crickets can be heard ; the air is soft and balmy, and filled with a soft, ethereal haze, in which the retreating hills fade away: — In spite of the Americans^ the Hudson is a beautiful ri\cr CHAPTER VII. THE CANADIAN PACIFIC. Every nation, as well as every individual, has its price. When Canada complained that her interests had been neglected in the negotiations preceding the Treaty of Washington, the British Government tacitly acknow- ledged the justice of the complaint, and offered to settle the matter by guaranteeing the interest on a portion of the money required to build a railway on Canadian territory from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The construction of the railway was one of the con- ditions under which British Columbia had consented to enter the Dominion ; and, without assistance from Great Britain, Canada would have had difficulty in fulfilling her part in the bargain. The proffered solatium was therefore willingly accepted, and in fifteen years the Canadian Pacific Railway was completed from ocean to ocean. In construction and equipment it compares fa\our- ably with other pioneer railways on the continent. Tl:e track is well laid ; and as. moreover, the speed of the trains is not great, the motion >s as easy as that of a sailing vessel in a calm sea, and the journey of nearly a week by day and night, from the St. Lawrence to the Straits of Georgia, is less irksome than might be expected. The stations are buildings of good design, which do not outrage the eye in the midst of forest, G 2 84 The Modern Odyssey. prairie, and mountain scenery ; the sleeping-cars are comfortable, some of them being fitted with baths ; and restaurant-cars, attached to the trains during the day, provide fairly well-cooked and fairly well-served meals. The conductors are always intelligent, and often agree- able. The line is worked under the block system — a refinement of caution on a railway over the greater part of which but one passenger train passes in each direction in twenty-four hours. It is hoped that the Canadian Pacific Railway, which owes its existence to a not very honourable com- pact between Great Britain and her most populous colony, may eventually become the established mail route between England and China, Japan, and even Australia. Whatever its imperial and commercial ad- vantages may hereafter prove to be, few other lines have so much to offer to the mere tourist. It traverses backwoods and forests by the side of rivers and lakes, and passes through some of the oldest cities of the North American continent, as well as cities which have sprung up during the last few months. It skirts the northern shore of an inland sea, Lake Superior, and threads its way through a chain of lochs lying eastward of the Lake of the Woods. It skims over a thousand miles of hot and dusty prairie before it climbs into the Rockies, yet snow lies at midsummer in the pass by which it crosses their summits ; and the cations of the salmon rivers falling into the Pacific lead it down to the sea at Vancouver. It also affords a glimpse of almost as many varieties of social existence. In one district every inhabited place is a French village ; in another the only habitations are the log huts of the backwoodsmen. In the prairies the broad wheat-fields of Scotch colonies of crofters lie on either hand, and cattle-runs, planted here and there with an Indian The Canadian Pacific. 85 encampment. In the mountain district the clear surface of a lake by the side of the railway is often wrinkled by the prow of an Indian canoe ; mining camps are frequently passed in the caiions of the Pacific slope, and gangs of Chinamen are seen at work. There are but two regularly fortified towns in North America, and Quebec is one of them. The citadel and the walls had been standing for many generations, and had not heard a hostile shot for more than a century, when the Canadian Pacific Railway chose for its ter- minus a strip of low ground under the cliffs overhanging the river St. Charles, near its junction with the St. Law- rence. Quebec is unlike any other American city. It is built upon a wedge of high land in the angle between the rivers, and it is defended by ramparts, gates, mar- tello towers, and ancient batteries. The streets are steep, narrow, and quiet, and the tin tiles with which many of the houses are roofed give them a quaint and mcdic-eval appearance. The churches, convents, and other religious buildings would not seem out of place in a country town of Northern France, and the citadel towers above all like ^e^ fortress at Luxemburg. French is spoken almost universally. At first it is difficult to realise that Quebec is in the New World. Even its population is stationary, an unusual circumstance in the life of an American city. Here and there the civilisation of the nineteenth century has intruded, but not sufficiently to destroy the indivi- duality of the place. On the river, where one would look for a barge floating down the stream, a steamboat of the American type, with a walking beam and two tiers of decks, is seen passing rapidly to the wharf under the walls ; and to reach the upper town from the shore, it is no longer necessary to climb the steep ascent of Cote de la Montague, for a hydraulic elevator now runs from 86 The Modern Odyssey. the Market Place up to the eastern end of Dufferin Terrace. In other respects Quebec is as old-fashioned as ever. There was a time when Quebec was the most im- portant place in North America. During a century and a half the possession of it was disputed by English, French, and Americans. Each nation has besieged it, and has held it in turn : two of them have abandoned it, and it remains in the possession of the third, which is alien to the great majority of the inhabitants. Its day has passed, and it is falling into obscurity. The river is blocked with ice in the winter, and the Canadian Pacific Railway is seeking access to the sea in lower latitudes. As long as the St. Lawrence was too much encumbered with shallows to allow vessels of large tonnage to go up to ]\Iontreal, Quebec was the chief sea-port of Canada, Now, however, that the bed of the river has been dredged, there is nothing to prevent an Allan steamer of 6,000 tons from discharging her cargo on to the wharves of Montreal ; and Halifax, a port which is seldom closed by ice, has been brought into communication with Canada by the Intercolonial Railway. The loss of commercial importance will not affect the historical interest and old- fashioned aspect of Quebec, but will rather tend to pre- serve them, Tliere is no cause for regret that the hurry and turmoil of the age have passed by Quebec, and have left one place of repose in America — one little patch of Europe in a vast wilderness of new things. Montreal, the largest city of British North America, has, like a widow remarried, borne three names. Hochc- laga, the Indian name of the original settlement at the junction of the Ottawa and the St. Lawrence, was quickly changed by the French into Ville Marie, which in turn gave i:)lace to Montreal. Though it lacks the bustle, fever, and turmoil of a United States' city, ^Montreal seems to -^ The Canadian Pacific. 87 be really and solidly prosperous. The streets are well paved, the houses substantial, and the churches hand- some if not altogether pleasing in appearance. McGill College is a severe and learned-looking edifice of grey granite. The French and Scotch elements prevail ; the latter in the commercial quarter of the city, the former in the smaller streets, where the names above the shops and the absence of sash windows would almost make the passer-by imagine that he was in a town of Picardy. St. Helen's wooded island, lying in mid-stream in front of the wharves, offers a good view of the spires and domes of the city, with Mount Royal in the background. From Mount Royal a superb panorama of the sur- rounding country is obtained, and it would be hard to find a more beautiful scene. The summit can be reached without toil, as an elevator — a machine used almost universally in America — runs up the side of the hill to within a short distance of the top. An observatory at the highest point rises above the level of the trees, and the view is unbroken in every direction. The red city is seen lying at the base, with the towers of Notre Dame displayed upon a background of river, and on the horizon above them are the grey-blue hills of Vermont. The branches of the Ottawa which form the fertile island on which Montreal is placed can clearly be traced in the midst of green fields ; the course of the St. Lawrence coming out of the west and widening into a lake where it is joined by the main channel of the Ottawa, is marked out by a blue track, which after many miles is finally lost to sight on the eastern horizon ; and the long tubular bridge, which the Canadians, with pardonable vanit)', have styled the eighth wonder of the world, is seen spanning the river with a distressingly rigid line. On the slope of a minor hill, overlooking a shallow valley hemmed in by trees on 88 The Modern Odyssey. either side, and enclosing a lovely glimpse of blue dis- tance and near meadows, a toboggan slide, another dis- cordant object which disturbs the harmony of the scene, has been erected, and in a hollow between two spurs of the mountain gleam the white stones of the Cemetery in the midst of brilliant autumn foliage. The entire surface of Mount Royal is thickly wooded and covered with ferns and shrubs, but pathways and zigzag roads give access to every part of it, and at a hundred points are revealed glimpses of forest, tilth, pastures, woodlands, rivers, and plains gradually merging into the blue hills on the horizon as they recede from view. The Ottawa, which is the chief purely Canadian river, has not yet been thoroughly explored to its source in a little-known part of the country, but the Canadian Pacific Railway follows it from Montreal to Mattawa, a distance of more than 300 miles, passing through the city of Ottawa on the way. The Pacific Express leaves Montreal in the evening, and traverses a flat country, where the fireflies are seen sparkling in the herbage, and the rays of the moonlight glittering on the metal spires of the Roman Catholic churches of the French villages ; and as the train stops at the wayside stations the profound stillness is broken only by the occasional bleating of a sheep or by the plash of a distant waterfall. The City of Ottawa is also accessible from Montreal by water. The steamer starts from Lachine, above the rapids, and enters the lake formed by the confluence of the St. Lawrence with the smaller river, and calls at many a quaint French village on the shores of Ottawa's broad curving reaches bounded by wooded bluffs. The navigation is not continuous, and at the portage round the Carillon Rapids passengers are carried over a short line of railway and transferred to another steamer which runs throucrh to Ottawa. The Canadian Pacific. 89 At the beginning of the second quarter of this century, there was a colonel of the Royal Engineers who was remarkable for having the shortest surname in the language. He was called By, and yet it fell to his lot to lay out a city on the banks of the Ottawa, which, in his honour, was called Bytown. As Bytown it existed for twenty-seven years, when the fate which overtakes women and Canadian cities came upon it, and it exchanged its name for that of the river on whose banks it was built. In the course of time Ottawa was chosen as the seat of Government of the Dominion of Canada, a vast extent of country ex- tending from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and bounded on the north by the palseocrystallic fields of the Arctic Ocean. Ottawa is a clean and prosperous place. All the streets are lined with trees, and all the sidewalks are planked. The houses are usually built of boards, lathed and plastered inside, and often veneered on the outside with bricks. The Houses of Parliament, with the ad- jacent Public Offices, are a handsome range of buildings standing on a bluff overlooking the river, and in design are rather suggestive of a Clapham hospital or asylum. The grounds are exceedingly well kept, and contain a few specimens of the inevitable Russian guns taken in the Crimea. The Ottawa runs at the foot of the slope, and would be an ornament to the picture if the water were visible. The lumber-stores and saw-mills of Hull, a suburb of the city, discharge all their refuse into it, and convert a beautiful river into a common sewer for chips and saw- dust. A narrow streak of dark water may here and there be discerned, but the greater portion of the surface is concealed. The Chaudicre Falls, which suppl)- power to the saws, are in like manner disfigured by stacks and flumes and other accessories of the timber trade. Ottawa 90 The Modern Odyssey. is wholly given up to timber. Even the air is laden with the scent of sawn wood, and the river is but a machine for conveying and cutting up fir trees. The logs are hewn in the interior and cast at random into the water, which bears them sometimes two hundred miles to their destination at the Chaudiere Falls, and then meekly carries away the refuse. When the river is low the logs are caught by the projecting headlands, or are blocked by the rocks in mid-stream, and in many a lovely, solitary reach the scene is robbed of half its charm by a dam of many thousands of derelict trunks, stripped of their bark, and identical in size and shape. A special service of men and boats is maintained in order to disentangle the logs and send them forth again on their journey to Ottawa. But a far greater eyesore, however, are the skeletons of the burnt trees where a clearing has been re- morselessly made in the backwoods. Fire is unfortunately the only practicable method of removing the timber so as to adapt the land to agricultural purposes. After leaving the banks of the Ottawa, the line passes through scores of miles of wildernesses of charred stumps and forests of bare poles standing gauntly above the under- growth. In the burnt woods a few white birches, which are not so easily set on fire as the firs, alone survive the conflagration. The railway itself is often the only place in which a green thing is seen flourishing, and wild strawberries and blueberries may be gathered almost under the wheels of the engines. It is probable, however, that one natural feature will remain unchanged until the end of time. Forests may be converted into tracks of wood ashes, but all the mischief of man will never be able to lower the level of the lakes by so much as one inch. They appear constantly in the landscape, and of every si/.e, frf m the tarn of an acre in extent, and covered with water-lilies, The Canadian Pacific. 91 to the inland sea on which a ship might sail for two days without sighting land. The line, after approaching but not touching Lake Nipissing, passes through a woodland region, and reaches Lake Superior at Heron Bay. For nearly two hundred miles it runs along the northern shore of the largest of the American lakes ; sometimes striking inland for a short distance across the base of a promontory ; some- times winding in a serpentine course by the side of inlets and creeks ; sometimes carried on a ledge in the cliffs rising abruptly from the margin, or on a wooden bridge of slender appearance which spans a cleft in the hills. A chain of islands lies near the shore, and between them are caught glimpses of the open lake, which only differs in appearance from the sea in that its waters are bluer and clearer. Many of the islands and hills on the mainland are in shape a high plateau separated from a shelving base by almost perpendicular dark-red cliffs. In a continent which extends 3,000 miles from east to west, it would be inconvenient to have one universal time, which in extreme cases would make 12 of the clock occur nearly two hours before or after the real noon. For travelling purposes, it would be still more inconvenient if every railway station observed local time. North America has, therefore, been divided into zones or sections, bounded b}' certain meridian lines, and in each of these the time differs by one hour from the time in the adjacent sections. These are four in number, and in them Eastern, Central, Mountain, or Pacific time is respectively observed. Thus, in travelling from one place to another lying east or west of it, the change of time is not made gradually, but at certain specified places on the journey, just as on board ship the clocks are always altered at a certain time, namely, at 92 The Modern Odyssey. noon. On the Canadian Pacific Railway the first change, from Eastern to Central time, is made at Port Arthur, where the line leaves Lake Superior for the Prairies ; and in less than a week the overland traveller to the West is again compelled to alter his habits to the extent of several hours after having already done so while crossing the Atlantic ; so that by the time he reaches the Pacific he practically dines, goes to bed, and breakfasts nearly nine hours later than he was accustomed to do less than a fortnight before in England. Thus it happens that most people on arrival in America feel unusually sleepy in the evening, and yet find it difficult to prolong their rest in the morning. Another radical change is introduced at Port Arthur. It has been left for the Canadian Pacific Railway to do that which the revolutionary American of the United States never ventured to propose, namely, to effect an alteration in the method of counting the hours, and to introduce into America a system long in use in Italy. In the time-tables of the transcontinental trains, which travel for six days and nights, it would be difficult to distinguish readily, several days in advance, the hours a.m. from the hours p.m. if they were numbered in the usual way, and the bold step of numbering them from I to 24, beginning at midnight, was taken. Thus 4 o'clock in the afternoon becomes 16 o'clock, and 10 o'clock at night becomes 22 o'clock. At first it is puzzling to be told by a station-master that a certain train is due at 23 minutes past 15, or to read in a time- table that it will leave a certain place at 18.29; but the system has many advantages, and saves much confusion in long journeys. It has also been adopted on the railways of India. Port Arthur is a harbour on the north-west shore of Lake Superior, sheltered by islands and the pro- The Canadian Pacific. 93 montory of Thunder Cape, which was once an active volcano. At Fort William, a few miles further on, the train halts for an hour to replenish the tanks and refrigerators with water and ice, an operation which is performed once or twice every day during the journey. The sun is sinking towards the plains of the West as the train quits the lake shore and steams away to the prairies through a wooded district traversed by a chain of small lakes lying around the Lake of the Woods, which the line touches at the lumber settlement of Rat Portage. In the cool and quiet evening after sunset it is utterly delightful to stand on the platform between the cars and watch Canada flying past, with its woods looming in the darkness beneath the starry sky, while every now and then the gleaming surface of some solitary lake in which the heavens are mirrored, flashes out of the gloom. A few miles within the eastern boundary of the prairie lies the brisk and prosperous city of Winnipeg, v/hich in a very i^v^ years has grown from log-cabinhood to cityhood ; and as the majority of the houses are detached, it covers a large area in proportion to its population. Its most striking feature at present is the large number of telegraph and telephone wires which run along the main street. Although the prairies extend for many hundred miles, with their wide expanse of herbage seldom raised or depressed more than a few feet above or below the normal level of the plain, they are not monotonous or lonely with the loneliness of a calm ocean. The little things which elsewhere would pass unnoticed here thrust themselves into view. Thus, it is pleasant to observe by the side of a solitary dwelling a swing, to show that the children are not forgotten. The swallows twitter to the travellers in the train from under the caves of a 94 The Modern Odyssey. coal-shed where they have built their nests. A cluster of Indian tents, with horses grazing around them, is seen near at hand : the children rush out to stare at the train just as they do in all other countries. A handsome brave, spoilt by the cast-off clothes of civilisa- tion, travels on the platform of the car for a dozen miles. Sometimes a line of low trees, curiously raised above the horizon by the mirage, appears in the distance, and where the ^redJjHes and the marigolds grow the prairie is carpeted with bright patches of colour. The little gophers peer inquisitiv'ely out of the grass, and the prairie dogs are enthralled for a moment ; but fear soon overcomes curiosity, and they scuttle away from the line. A very shallow valley, in which a few trees are growing, carries the Assiniboine towards the Arctic Ocean, and the next feature in the landscape is Gull Lake, a sheet of water to which all the birds of the continent seem to have flocked. A few rising towns arc passed, regularly planned and built, and an agreeable contrast to the random assemblage of slovenly structures which constitutes a new settlement in the United States. On a bend of the Saskatchewan, lined with trees and sheltered by the bluffs which the impinging waters ha\"e formed out of a (ew slight eminences, is a township bearing the quaint name of Medicine Hat. As the train draws up in the midst of the neat and compact little town, the platform is gay with the familiar British red tunics worn by the troopers of the North-West Mounted Police, a small body of men, by whose gentle yet firm control those Indians are restrained who on the other side of the frontier engross the attention of the greater portion of the United States' Army. The crossing of the plain from Winnipeg to the foot of the Rockies occupies two da)-s. To a native of an undulating country-, the prairies are at all times at- The Canadian Pacific. 95 tractive, but they are most beautiful in the evening, when the horizontal rays of the sunset light skim along the surface, imbuing it with a peculiar tinge and lengthening the dwarf shadows. In the evening of the second day a long, serrated line of mountain-peaks, nearly uniform in height, appears on the horizon, soon to be hidden by the approaching gloom of night. The moon is seen shining once more upon the waste ; but next morning, at daybreak, the train is climbing the eastern slope of the Rockies, and has almost reached the summit of the Kicking Horse Pass. Torrents struggle with the rocks by the side of the track ; cascades fall almost upon it ; icy crags and ridges, intersected by ravines and crevices choked with snow, tower above it. The air is chill at last : the sun dazzles on white peaks. In a little while the Kicking Horse River, racing with the train to the westward, shows that the highest portion of the pass has been sur- mounted, and a halt is made for breakfast at a pretty Swiss chalet, built by the Canadian Pacific Railway on the side of a hill. The line then descends to a trough — which is, however, some thousands of feet above the level of the sea — separating the main range of the Rockies from the detached spur of the Scl- kirks, and runs down the valley of the Columbia River. Tall, slender pines — the finest trees in the world — once covered the sides of the mountains, but forest fires, some of them still smouldering, have laid bare the slopes, or have left only the naked trunks. Sometimes a shell of bark is all that remains to show the former stature of the giants, the fire ha\-ing hollowed out the resinous trunk like a cylinder. It is a melancholy sight. Wherever the railway is, there also is a belt of ruin and destruction. Many of the ravines arc so choked with smoke that only the peaks of the opposite hills can be seen. The dim g6 The Modern Odyssey. forms of the maimed cedars loom through the haze, half- charred logs and broken branches meet the eye on every side, and the valleys languish in the fumes of the burn- ing wood. The miner or pioneer lights a fire with a careless hand to boil his kettle, forgets to rake out the ashes, and in a icw weeks a stately grove is destroyed ; and the railway contractor, who wantonly sets fire to the forest as the easiest method of removing a few trees out of his way, completes the ruin. When the fire has once laid hold of the timber it is inextinguishable, for the meandering torrents will avail neither to quench the flames nor to bar their progress, and it is probable that in a year or two hardly a cedar will be left within sight of the line. The Beaver is but a mountain-torrent abounding in waterfalls, and hurrying precipitately down the east- ward slope of the Selkirks, yet it shows the path by which they can be scaled. The line runs along a ledge on the side of the valley; crosses the intersecting ravines on trestle bridges, one of which is nearly three hundred feet in height ; soars above the smoke in the gorge, so that the patches of snow on the further side can be dis- cerned ; enters a pass which but three years before the opening of the railway had never been trodden by the foot of man ; and, after running under snow-sheds at the base of an almost perpendicular precipice, emerges on to the Pacific slope. Here the scenery changes ; a valley, hemmed in by lofty, snow-clad ridges, is crossed on a looped curve, and the canon of the Eagle River and brighter wild flowers appear. In many places gangs of Chinamen are seen at work, or cooking their rice by the side of the line. As the day wanes the pure light from the north-west falls from above the dark hills upon Shuswap, a solitary lake, whose calm surface is wrinkled by the evening breeze The Canadian Pacific. 97 and streaked by the lines diverging from the prow of an Indian canoe. The railway runs along the shore for nearly fifty miles, and at the lower end the river which entered the lake so boisterously issues from it a broad and tranquil stream, with trees on its banks and meadows sheltered by the mountains. Soon the Eagle joins the Fraser, where again the railway takes a river as its guide to the Pacific, and runs down the canon into a green and marshy district bright with flowers. The^s^wi^^ covered with blossoms of the purest white, the handsome leaves of the wild raspberry, the vivid green of the ferns mingling with the vermilion elder-berries, and the pink flowers of the fireweed line the track until the train emerges from the woods on to an inlet of the Pacific. The smell of the sea is in the air, and the seaweed is growing side by side with the herbage of the land. The train halts for a few minutes at Port Moody, and brings the journey of three thousand miles from the Atlantic to the Pacific to a close at the western terminus of the Canadian Pacific Railway in the new City of Van- couver, a place which is perhaps destined some day to be the rival of San Francisco. It is inappropriately named, as it is not situated on the island of that ilk, but on the mainland of British Columbia. II CHArXER VIII. CALIFORNIA, A LOST JEWEL. During the first quarter of the present century the Pacific coast of North America belonged nominally to two nations occupying the extremities of the European continent. Spain, though separated from Russia by the width of Europe, marched with her in the New World. It is true that Great Britain claimed a portion of the coast-line midway between the Spanish possessions and Russian America ; but when Florida was ceded to the United States, the Spanish King made over also all his rights to the Pacific coast north of the 42nd parallel, and the Government of the United States, with its usual policy of claiming more than it expected to obtain, as- serted that the territory thus transferred extended as far north as the Russian line. The meekness of the British I-^orcign Office when dealing with the United States is phenomenal ; but a claim which would exclude the British North American colonies from the Pacific sea- board was impossible, and the Oregon boundary ques- tion was established as a point of contention between the two nations. Great Britain proposed that the Colum- bia Ri\er, which rises in the Selkirks and flows southward and westward until it reaches the Pacific in Lat. 46 N., should be the dix'iding line between the United States and British Ccilumbia. The main point of the dispute was arranged by the Treaty of itS46, under which Great California, a Lost Jewel. 99 Britain, having abandoned her claim to Oregon, secured the Pacific coast from the Straits of San Juan northward as far as what was then Russian America. Simultaneously with the loss of Oregon, Great Britain let slip the golden possession of California, which for a time was within her grasp. It belonged nominally to the Mexican Republic, but the hold of that Government upon it, like the hold of all Governments of Spanish origin upon distant possessions, was insecure. The pro- vince was ripe for insurrection, and juntas were in session openly proposing to transfer the allegiance of the country to Great Britain. Moreover, an Irish priest named Macnamara, in intimate relations with the British Legation in the City of Mexico, had obtained from the Mexican Government a grant of land to the extent of several square leagues on the Bay of San Francisco, where he proposed to found an Irish colony under the pro- tection of England, and he was landed at Santa Barbara from the British frigate Jiuw in order to carry out his scheme of colonisation. A few bold strokes, a little audacity and good fortune, and California would have been added to the list of British colonics. But suddenly an American explorer, who had already visited the country, swooped down like an eagle from the Rockies upon the Pacific shore and threw all the plans of the British part)- into confusion. In the corps of Topographical Engineers of the United States" Army was an officer named Fremont, the son of a Frenchman who had left his country during the convulsions of the Revolution, and whose ship had been captured by an ICnglish man-of-war while on passage to San Domingo. The exiled Frencliman spent some \-ears in caj^tivit}' as a prisoner of war in one of t!ic W'c; t Indian Islands, but at length escaped and landcel in Virginia. His son avenged his lather's ca[)ti\il\- b)- II 2 lOo The Modern Odyssey. becoming the instrument by which CaHfornia was snatched out of the opened hands of Great Britain. The younger Fremont had already made a name as an explorer. In 1843 he had been in command of an expedition sent to explore the country lying beyond the then existing frontier of the United States, and he had succeeded in crossing the Rockies into Oregon and California. No sooner had he set out on this expedition when orders of recall were sent to him from Washington, on the pretext that he had without authority taken away with him a military equipment for his party which the peaceful nature of his geographical pursuit did not warrant — he had requisitioned a small mountain howitzer in addition to his rifles. The orders of recall were sent to St. Louis, where his wife was residing. She detained them, and to this act of hers the United States are indebted for the possession and Great Britain for the loss of California ; for if Fremont had returned he would not have had an op- portunity of displaying those qualities as an explorer which led to his being sent on another expedition to California in the year 1845, which yielded such splendid results. This expedition, like the former one, was wholly of a scientific character, and none of Fremont's men were soldiers. When he reached California he left his party at a spot two hundred miles from the sea, in order to avoid giving offence to the Mexican authorities at a time when the Texas question had strained the relations between the two countries, and proceeded alone to Monterey, the residence of General Castro, the Mexican commandant, from whom he requested and obtained permission to put his expedition into winter quarters in the San Joaquin vallc}-, between the Sierra Nevada and the coastal range, and to continue his explorations further to the south. California^ a Lost Jewel. ioi While, however, he was on the march in the Buenaventura valley he received a message from General Castro order- ing him to retire at once from the country, and in- formation arrived that troops were being assembled to enforce the order. The Mexican Government were not unnaturally suspicious of the presence of an American officer in a part of their territory which was ripe for revolt. Fremont thereupon retired to Pico del Gabellan, or Hawk's Peak, a mountain in the Sierra overlooking the plain of Monterey, where he could see Castro making preparations to attack him. He roughly fortified Hawk's Peak and raised the flag of the United States. On the fourth day the flagstaff fell. He accepted the omen, broke up his camp, and retired north into Oregon, being unwilling to do anything that might embarrass his country at such a critical time. A letter from Castro, offering a cessation of hostilities and basely proposing that they should in combination declare the country independent of Mexico, and assume the government of it, reached Hawk's Point only a few hours after Fremont had quitted it, and while the ashes of his camp fires were still glowing. Hitherto he had done nothing likely to lead to the annexation of California to the United States or to prevent its absorption by England. His visits to the country had been solely in the character of an explorer conducting an expedition of civilians. The final impulse had yet to be given to him. In the middle of March, 1846, he quitted the neigh- bourhood of Monterey, having been forced by the hostile attitude of the Mexicans to abandon his design of making explorations in the south, and went northwards with the intention of returning to the United States by way of Oregon. He had reached Lake Tlamath, which is just within the southern boundary of Oregon, when In's 102 The Modern Odyssey. further progress was stopped by the wild nature of the mountainous country and by the opposition of the Tlamath Indians, One morning early in May, as he was encamped by the lake shore, he was astonished to see two white men approach. They had only escaped massacre at the hands of the Indians by the fleetness of their horses, and they proved to be part of the escort of a United States' officer of Marines who had been sent with despatches from Washington for Fremont, and who was nowencamped within reach of him. A sixty miles' ride along the shore of the lake brought Fremont to Gillespie. The latter's despatches were apparently unimportant, for besides some private letters — the first Fremont had received for nearly a year — there was only an ordinary letter introducing Gillespie to Fremont from Buchanan, Secretary of State and afterwards President of the United States. The letter was expressed in terms which should not excite suspicion if it should fall into hostile hands as the bearer crossed Mexican territory. But very much was written between the lines, and in the private letters from Fremont's father-in-law. Senator Brunton, there were obscure and enigmatical passages. Gillespie, moreover, was charged to impress upon him the necessity of watching and counteracting any foreign scheme in California, and of conciliating the good-will of the people towards the United States. The chance meeting of Fremont with Gillespie in the wilderness, by the shore of a lake in an almost un- known country, infested by Indians, who that very night killed three of his men and compelled him to retire to his former camp on the northern end of Lake Tlamath, diverted the current of his life, and converted him from an explorer into a soldier. He hurried back into Cali- fornia, and reached the valley of the Sacramento at the end of Ma}'. The country was in a state of anarchy. A Califor.xia, a Lost Jewel, 103 powerful clique was agitating for annexation to Great l^ritain ; large portions of the public lands were being transferred to British subjects ; a British fleet was ex- pected on the coast ; and a massacre of the American colonists was a very probable catastrophe. All these contingencies were averted by the energy and boldness of Fremont. He placed himself at the head of the American settlers, who eagerly took service with him, and in a month all the country north of the Bay of San Francisco had shaken off the yoke of Mexico, and an independent Government was established under the Bear Flag — an emblem chosen on account of the fighting qualities of the White Bear of the Sierra Nevada, which never flies before its enemies, however numerous, and is noted for its courage in extremities. [Meanwhile a power- ful British fleet was preparing to pounce down upon the prize from its anchorage in the Mexican harbour of Mazatlan ; but the American commodore at the same place easily outwitted the English admiral. He weighed and put to sea, steering towards the Sandwich Islands, and was quickly followed by Sir George Seymour. He tacked, however, during the night, and the eluded admiral was left to perform his voyage to Honolulu alone. When, after some weeks, the latter anchored in Monterey Ba\', he was astonished to find that the city was in the possession of Commodore Sloat, and that the American flag was floating over it. Fremont in the meantime was marching towards the coast, and as he approached Monterey he heard that Commodore Sloat was in possession of the town, and that war had been declared between Mexico and the United States. The White Bear flag was hauled down, and the Stars and Stri])es hoisted in its place. The accounts differ on the in-i[)ortant point whetlicr Sloat knew of the war when he arri\-ed off Monterc\-. lie I04 The Modern Odyssey. certainly ofTcrcd to salute the town, but the courtesy was declined, on the plea that there was no powder to return it ; in reality, because the people were daily ex- pecting the l^ritish fleet. It was not until he heard of the approach of Fremont that he ventured to seize it. He certainly hesitated some days before doing so, and he appears to have had misgivings — which were not allayed when he found that Fremont had no positive orders to commence hostilities — as to whether he was justified in taking the place without instructions from his Govern- ment. He resigned the command of the fleet almost immediately to Captain Stockton on the plea of ill-health, and returned home. He succeeded in outmanoeuvring the British fleet, but after that coup he seems to have lacked courage to incur responsibility. Fortunately for the United States, his hesitation did not entail the loss of California,' which, at the conclusion of the Mexican war, was formally incorporated into the Republic ; and the frontier that had so lately been traced upon the bed of the Missouri and the Mississippi was pushed forward to the Rio Grande and the Pacific. The year 1846 is, with two exceptions, the most notable epoch in the history of the United States. While Zachary Taylor, under whom served two officers, Jefferson Davis and Robert Lee, who, eighteen years after, became the most conspicuous men of their age, was reducing Vera Cruz and the City of Mexico, Stockton and Fremont subdued California, whither, in a short time, the discovery of gold by a Swiss settler attracted the restless spirits of every nation, and brought tlie original Thirteen States* — which but seventy \-ears pre- viously had almost all of them been within the sound of * Surely the wonderful prosperity of those Thirteen .States and their pro;4eny should have long ago discredited the superstition that the number is unluckv ! California, a Lost Jewel. 105 the Atlantic waves — into a commanding position upon the Pacific, while the peaceful acquisition of Oregon extended the shore-line as far north as Cape Flattery. Before 1846 the solitary undisputed possession of the United States on the Pacific was the coast included between the 42nd parallel and the Columbia River, and was separated from the ICastern and Central States by a wide expanse of country, known only to the Indians, and by two ranges of mountains. Now four lines of railway traversing settled districts link the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific. The life of Fremont, the virtual conqueror of Cali- fornia, is distinctly a stirring and picturesque life, such as falls to the lot of few Americans. His mother had been married at the age of seventeen to a man forty-five years her senior, from whom, after many years of misery, she was divorced by a special Act of the Legislature of Virginia. His father was her second husband, a French exile. At the age of nineteen he was expelled from Charleston College on account of an honourable but unfortunate affair of the heart. He spent two years and a half as naval instructor on board the United States' sloop Xatchez, and on his return he was appointed assist- ant engineer in a railway survc)-ing party. His capacity as an explorer, shown in two expeditions organised by the War Department, gained for him — although he had never graduated at West Point — a commission in the corps of Topographical Engineers. During tlie next few years, until the outbreak of the Mexican War di\'crtcd the current of his life, he was engaged in exploring the unknown country lying on either side of the Rockies. Now he was following the devout example of the pio- neers of the 17th century, and engraving upon the granite face of some crag the figure of the Cross ; now he was planting the flag of his country upon the highest io5 The Modern Odyssey. peak of the mountains, which still bears his name. At one moment he was fighting for his scalp and his life ; at another he was sitting down at a lodge of friendly Indians to a banquet of stewed dog ; and once, in Utah, he and his party were in such danger of perishing by starvation that each man took an oath against canni- balism. While engaged in the subjugation of California he was a victim of the system of dual government which then existed in the newly annexed province. Both Com- modore Stockton and General Kearney claimed to be the supreme authority ; and Fremont, who adhered to the former, under whom he had placed himself after the departure of Commodore Sloat, became involved in a charge of mutinous conduct towards General Kearney. A duel between him and a certain Colonel Mason, arising out of the affair, was postponed once because his ant- agonist had chosen double-barrelled fowling-jjicccs as the weapons of the combat, and but one double-barrelled gun could be found in the country ; and again by the peremptory orders of General Kearney. Fremont was sent under arrest to Washington, where he was tried for mutiny and disobedience. The feeling of military men was against him for his deference to a naval rather than a military commander, and he was found guilty on all the charges and sentenced to be dismissed the service, with a recommendation to the clemency of the President on account of the peculiar situation in which he was placed in California. Popular sentiment ran strongly in his favour. President Polk confirmed the finding, but remitted the sentence in consideration of Fremont's public services. IIov>-ever, he resigned his commission without delay, and resumed for a while his old occupa- tion of explorer. When California was admitted to the Union, he fittingly became her representative in the Cauforxia, a Lost jewel. 107 Senate, and a few years after he was nominated a candidate for the Presidency. It might have been thought that an officer to who n his country owed a large area of exceedingly rich terri- tory and a commanding position on the Pacific coast could not have outlived the gratitude and esteem of his fellow-citizens. Nations, however, are often no less for- getful of their benefactors than individuals, and shortly before Fremont's death in the summer of 1890, it was announced in a telegram from Washington in the London newspapers that " the Treasury officials have discovered that the United States have, since the year 1850, owed General John C. Fremont the sum of $21,000, and a warrant for that amount has been sent to him. His surprise was so great at this unexpected windfall that he fell fainting on the floor. General P'rcmont had been living almost in poverty for many years past." Vancouver, the western terminus of the Canadian Pacific Railway, is on Burrard's Inlet, a creek of the Gulf of Georgia, which is not a gulf but a sound separating the island of Vancouver from the mainland. The voyage from the city of Vancouver on the main- land to Victoria on the island of Vancouver occupies six hours. As the steamer paddles down the inlet, the conical form of Mount Baker, almost entirely covered with snow, is seen right astern, and continues in sight throughout the passage of sixty miles. Other snow-clad peaks of the Cascade Range rise behind the blue-grey hills near the shore, and towards the south the stately forms of the Olympic Range in Oregon loom, nearly ninety miles distant. After crossing the sound, the steamer's course passes close to the island of San Juan — the stakes lost by Great Britain in her latest contest with American diplomac}- — loS The Modern Odyssey. and is threaded through the wooded islands and islets l)'ing off the eastern shore of Vancouver, A large seg- ment of the horizon is obscured by the smoke of forest fires which also settles in the creeks and sounds, and drifts lazily to leeward over the water, often entirely hiding the numerous rocks ; and a pillar of smoke, or even a mass of flame, is seen in almost every island. Although the smoke destroys the beauty of the scene — a calm sound, studded with densely wooded islands, and overlooked on two sides by lofty ranges — it neverthe- less produces some very curious effects of colour where it mingles with the mountain clouds and receives the rays of the setting sun under the clear blue vault of the heavens above. The city of Victoria, the capital of British Columbia, is well situated on the south-eastern extremity of Van- couver Island, where the Straits of San Juan de Fuca join the Gulf of Georgia, opposite to the mouth of Puget Sound, which runs for some distance into Oregon. Here the Straits are about twenty miles in width, and from the further shore rise the massive forms of the Olympic Range, which poise themselves in all their grandeur above the middle belt of water. If the Pyrenees or the Alps could be removed from their own place and built up again upon the French shore of the Straits of Dover, and could be seen from the Lees at Folkestone or the low_ coast of Romney Marsh as they towered over the Channel, some idea of the stately appearance of the Oregon moun- tains would be obtained. Victoria is a cheerful if not a very beautiful place. An I'mglish air perx'ades the streets ; the people, though busy, are not in a hurry; and the houses, though built of wood, are tidy and comfortable. Like Winnipeg, it appears to live by electricity; it is lit by the electric light, and, though it has not ten thousand inhabitants, the poles Califorxia, a Lost yp.wr.i.. 109 in the chief thoroughfare support as many wires as there are in the Broadway of New York. Many of the duties of domestic service are performed by Chinese, who, on the Pacific coast, are imported to supply the lack of labour. As in all new countries where land is cheap, the city occupies a large area for its population, the majority of the houses, except in the business quarter, being sur- rounded by gardens. An Indian reserve adjoining the Chinese quarter brings the two most dissimilar races of mankind into companionship. Two peculiarities arc at once noticed in Victoria. One is that the women's fashions, as might be expected in an island of the Pacific six thousand miles from Paris, are, save in a very few cases, several years in arrear; the other is the custom of placing outside the shops slates on which orders may be written. Even the services of a physician may be bespoken in this primitive manner. The head-quarters of the British fleet in the Pacific are at Esquimalt, a land-locked harbour three miles from Victoria, from w^hich it is reached by a good though dusty road, through woods of pine, cedar, and flowering shrubs. Cattle with bells on their necks are seen feed- ing by the wayside, and the only habitations are two or three of the public-houses which flourish so exceedingly in the neighbourhood of a British naval station. Esqui- malt — the word is commonly pronounced almost as a monosyllable, thus " 'Squim'lt " — is a small haven, ac- cessible from the Straits of San Juan ; and since the opening of the Canadian Pacific Railway its strategic importance has greatly increased. It is connected by railway with the Vancouver collieries at Nanaimo, which supply the Pacific coast with coal. A railway, starting from Puget Sound, and traversing the scene of Ercmont's wanderings in Oregon, joins the shores of the Straits of San Juan to the Bay of San no The Modern Odyssey. Francisco ; but the trains are slow and the journey is tedious, and the majority of travellers will prefer a voyage of sixty hours along the Pacific coast to a land journey of but slightly less duration and involving a larger share of discomforts. The steamers running under the flag of the United States from Pugct Sound to San Francisco are comfort- able and of moderate size and speed. The course for the first six hours after leaving Victoria is in the fairway of the Straits. The noble Olympic Range gradually sub- sides into wooded hills in the direction of the mouth, and the scenery loses its sublimity and grandeur. The steamer rounds the lighthouse on Cape Flattery, stand- ing on a rocky ledge at the extreme north-west corner of the United States, and ambles easily before the fresh north-west trade wind on a due south course along the coast of Oregon, which, though never very far distant, is usually obscured by the mist. The voyage is uneventful. Hardly a ship is seen, and probably the only incident will be the sight of a whale spouting ; a puff of spray suddenly rises from the w^ater, resembling the column sent up by a shot striking the surface. If the harbour of San Francisco is entered at night, the constellations of the electric and other lights dotted over the low hills on which the city is built make a very beautiful display. The conditions of existence in some of the newer States of the Union are brought vividly to the notice of a. European traveller when he observes that the first in- quiry made by a passenger of a friend whom he has recognised on the wharf is whether any more Chinamen have been lately lynched in the Pacific States. The hasty methods of lynch-law, which for a long time was the only authority feared by the early settlers in Cali- fornia, are now put in force chiefly against Chinamen and ncc/roes. Cal/foka'ia, a Lost Jfavel. hi Little more than half a century has elapsed since the first house was built on the site of San Francisco, which is now one of the most important cities in the world, yet which, in spite of its superb position on a commodious haven, might never have attained its present magnitude if its development had not been artificially stimulated by the discovery of gold in the valley of the Sacramento. It is built upon the landward side of the southernmost of two tongues of land which jut out from the coast and enclose a loch having two arms. The tongue, in its original condition, was mainly composed of barren hills of loose sand intersected by ravines and gulches ; but these have been filled up and adjusted to a more uniform level, and the city stands for the most part upon a gently undulating surface. It occupies at present about half the width of the tongue, and the sand-hills lying between it and the Pacific shore show what was the appearance of the whole promontory fifty years ago. Soon, however, the firs and gum-trees which have been planted on the dunes will convert them into a pleasing range of green life. The northern side of the Golden Gate — as the entrance to the harbour is called — is formed by precipitous and rocky hills of that pale chocolate or lilac colour so often seen in Sicily and the South of Italy. In California the four seasons prevailing in most parts of the world are reduced to two — the wet and the dr\-. During the latter season the wind blows continual])- from the north-west, freshly in the day- time, but sinking to a calm at night ; and the haze which it brings with it from the ocean dims the colouring and obscures the more distant details of the beautiful scenery of the harbour. The cit\- cind the transformed sand-spit on which it stands are interesting rather than attracti\e to a tra\eller. Some of the streets are wide and lined b\- handsome 112 The Modern Odyssey. houses, and all the more important there ughfarcs are served by Hnes of cars drawn by an underground cable, which drags them at an even speed over all inequalities of the ground. In the eastern quarter all the side-walks arc paved. The two largest hotels are the finest in America, and, when the comforts which they offer are taken into consideration, the most inexpensive; but their colossal dimensions raise misgivings in a country subject to earthquakes. Some of the private houses in the suburbs, though built of wood and very elaborately decorated, are handsome structures. The extent to which individual liberty of action is carried in America is manifested in the bonfires and fireworks that blaze upon occasion in Market Street ; and the owner of a telescope obstructs the foot traffic and earns a com- petence by setting up the instrument on the side-walk and charging ten cents for a peep at a planet. Though the wharves are crowded with shi})ping, only a few large steamers such as would be found in an Atlantic port arc seen, the foreign trade being chiefly carried in the finest sailing vessels in the world. Opposite to San hVancisco, on the shallow mainland shore, is the city of Oakland, the terminus of the continental lines. The trains run to the head of two long piers, which stand in water suffi- ciently deep to allow the ferry-boats to come up to the cradles. The jetties arc more than two miles in length, and reduce the water transit between San Francisco ancj its continental suburb to three miles. The most attractive spots in the neighbourhood of San I-'rancisco are the Golden Gate Park, the Presidio, and the Cliff House, all lying between the city and the Pacific. The first docs infinite credit to the Cali- fornians. What was originally a stretch of low sand- hills has l:)ccn converted into a very beautiful garden in the midst of newly made park-lands covered with California, a Lost Jfavel. 113 trees and shrubs. Not far off is the Presidio, a name in which the old Roman military term Presidium ap- propriately survives, as it is the headquarters on the Pacific coast of the United States' Army. Like West Point on the Hudson, it is an oasis in the desert. The grounds are kept in perfect order ; the paths and roads are smooth and tidy ; the barracks are neat buildings, and the officers' quarters are charming cottages covered with roses and other climbing plants, and standing in the midst of lawns and gardens gleaming with geraniums and fuchsias. The Cliff House is an hotel overlooking the sands near the entrance to the Golden Gate, and is as quiet and solitary as it is possible to be in the neighbourhood of a great American city. Close to the shore is a rock covered with seals, who here have a sanctuary established by law, and proclaim their im- munity by grunting incessantly as they bask idly in the sun just out of reach of the gentle waves of the Pacific. CHAPTER IX. OBSERVATIONS UNDER THE HAWAIIAN FLAG. Great Britain, France, and the United States, having mutually agreed neither to annex nor establish a pro- tectorate over the Sandwich Islands, the Hawaiians, in grateful acknowledgment of those nations' forbearance in not taking what did not belong to them, adopted as the national flag an ensign combining the Union Jack, the Tricolor, and the Stars and Stripes in one piece of bunting, which is one of the handsomest that ever drooped from a stafif. Only American-built vessels are allowed to be registered under the American flag, and therefore, though the steamer Australia of 3,000 tons is officered and manned by Americans, and is owned by citizens of San Francisco, and plies thence to Honolulu, the fact of her having glided from a slip on the Clyde precludes her wearing the Stars and Stripes, and obliges her to take refuge under the ensign of a little, half- civilised kingdom in the Pacific, whose merchant navy a few generations ago was composed of outrigged canoes. When Captain Cook landed at Oahu he estimated that- the inhabitants of the Sandwich Islands, who then wore no clothing except a girdle of matting, numbered more than a quarter of a million. A century has passed, the matting has been discarded in favour of European clothes, and the population has dwindled below a Observations under the Hawaiian Flag. 115 hundred thousand. These survivors enjoy the blessings of popular government ; their Army is a force of sixty men, and their Navy is a steamer that once was employed in carrying stone on the river Tay. It does not very often happen that San Francisco is visited by royalty, and when on a certain July afternoon the report spread through the city that Queen Kapiolani of the Sandwich Islands had arrived, and would spend a night in the Palace Hotel before embarking in the Australia for Honolulu, the sensation of the previous week, namely the lynching of a Chinaman in Colusa County, was eclipsed. Next day the citizens flocked to the wharf where the steamer was lying, and her spar- deck was soon packed with Republicans eager to set their eyes upon a Queen ; nor did they forget to observe the charming American custom of offering flowers to the departing traveller. One table in the saloon was covered with wreaths and bouquets, and a floral arch bore the legend Aloha. This is a word of indefinite signi- fication in the musical language of Hawaii. It may be used to express the sentiment " I love you," as well as the compliment " You pretty thing," or the parting wish " Farewell." Many other vague and romantic ideas are contained in it, and it might be introduced with advantage into other languages. A fresh breeze was blowing as the Australia passed through the Golden Gate, but it had almost died away when the Farallonc Islands, which lie within sight of the shore, were abeam. The vo)'age was calm and pleasant. The attendants of the Queen, most of them bearing titles of State, clustered round their Sovereign like the personages of a comic opera. In the evenings there was music on deck, and the Hawaiians pla}-cd their guitars and sang native ballads and English songs with taste and skill. The pole-star sank lower and lower I 2 ii6 The Modern Odyssey. towards the northern horizon, and every night new constellations rose out of the sea. Flying fish darted out of the water, and skimmed over the tiny waves like white fairies at play, and the sea was often so smooth that the images of the goonies flying round were re- flected on the surface. Even when the nearest land was more than a thousand miles distant, the sea-birds were still following the ship, and how they were able to support their existence so far from the shore, with no place whereon to take their rest except the heaving waters, was a question which no one could answer. The Pacific appeared to differ greatly from the indigo blue of the Atlantic and the purple of the Mediterranean, for in colour it resembled a lovely and translucent gem of violet hue. The Aiistralia, ambling easily over the little waves at the rate of three hundred miles a day, accomplished her voyage in less than a week, and on the seventh morning the island of Molokai, half hidden by clouds, was sighted on the port beam, and soon after Oahu appeared right ahead. Though the channel between the islands is thirty miles wide, Kaniehameha the Great, a monarch who has been styled the Napoleon of the Pacific, trans- ported across it in war canoes at the beginning of this century an army which, as far as its numbers went, would even in these days be considered a useful addition to the military forces of a European Power. An idea of the magnitude and difficulty of the operation may be obtained by supposing an army corps, destined for the invasion of France, to have been conveyed across the British Channel in such boats as are found on the shore at Deal, Dover, and Folkestone. As the ship ncared the southern promontory of Oahu, the island on which Honolulu, the capital, is situated, a green fringe of trees gradually formed upon the shore. Observatioxs uxder the Hawaiian Flag. 117 A range of serrated hills runs towards the north, and ridges are thrown out on each side down to the sea. The westward ridges are green, and pleasant to the eye, as the eastern trade winds form clouds on the watershed which discharge the moisture they have stolen from the Pacific on to the western slopes. When the Australia had rounded Diamond Point, a headland formed by the crater of an extinct volcano, it was evident that she had entered the tropics, for a grove of cocoanuts was growing on the terrace at the foot of the hills, and the belt of calm, sapphire water encircling the shore was enclosed by a reef The Hawaiian Navy approached the ship, and the pilot came on board to conduct her through the gap in the coral which forms the entrance to the harbour of Honolulu. The Queen, having bestowed a Hawaiian decoration upon the captain of the Australia, went over the side into her own vessel and landed in state, while H.B.M.S. Conquest and an American sloop manned yards and fired a royal salute. Some of her subjects remarked that she had adopted the European fashion of wearing stays, and the curtain fell amid thunders of applause upon the last act of the comic opera of Kapiolani. Meanwhile the Ajistralia, with her humbler residue of mere subjects and citizens, steamed slowly to the wharf, and befouled the clear water with the mud churned up by her screw. The landing-stage was packed with natives who had flocked to sec the wonderful sight, just as the natives of Folkestone and Dover flock to the piers when the French steamer is due. Human nature appears to be cast in much the same mould all the world over, and that which agrceabK- occupies the idle moments of the maid or matron of Kent is no less diverting to her dark sister of the Pacific. The quay glowed with the voluminous forms of women adorned with leis or wreaths 1 1 8 The Modern Od ysse y. round their necks, and dressed in bright cottons, cut after the fashion of a night-gown ; and half the men ot Hoijolulu were there to take care of them. ■^'"''^ There are not many pleasures which can be com- pared to the delight of seeing the tropics for the first time. Everything seems so strange and beautiful. The sky is clear ; the sun shines in earnest all the day long, and throws the shadows of unknown foliage on to the way. There is nothing dowdy or dingy in the scene. Rich colours abound on the shore and the hill, and a calm blue ocean lies beneath the azure heavens. The trees are covered with flowers ; clusters of golden fruit hang from the graceful branches ; aromatic shrubs scent the air ; dragon-flies, looking as though they were clothed in scales of some bright metallic ore, dart in and out among the boughs. It seems like fairyland to the traveller from the sombre skies and neutral colours of the temperate zones. After a brief interval of twilight, the serene night comes ; the breeze dies away, and all is still except the crickets and the katydids, and the gum-trees rustling their leaves with the sound of a rivulet rippling over the stones. Even the stars are changed, for they shine without twinkling, as though to show that they, like the lovely world beneath, are at rest. Honolulu stands by the sea-shore, upon a narrow plain at the foot of the hills, which give it a background of dark green ridges and ravines. Near the wharves are a few regularly built streets, but the greater part of the city is composed of detached houses and cottages sur- rounded by gardens, and it therefore occupies a wider area than many European towns of three or four times the population. The roads and side-walks are in better order than those of New York, and stepping-stones are placed at the crossings — an accommodation which was provided in the streets of Pompeii two thousand years Observations under the Hawaiian Flag. 119 ago. The network of telephone wires and the electric lamps indicate the prevalence of American resources of civilisation, while the teams of draught oxen recall the primitive methods of bucolic Europe. The shops are expensive, but fairly good considering that they are distant some thousands of miles from the base of their supplies. The large number of hackney carriages plying in the streets betray the disinclination of the Hawaiians to use their legs for locomotion. The roads are dusty by nature, but they are assiduously watered and kept tolerably clean. Honolulu supports three daily papers, which, owing to the circumstance that the Sandwich Islands are not yet connected by telegraph with the rest of the world, are always in distress for news, except on the day after the arrival of the mails from Auck- land, Yokohama, or San Francisco. In the meantime the columns are filled with extracts from American and English journals. The harbour is small, but busy; several American schooners or ships are usually moored to the wharves ; every day one or more of the steamers trading between the islands enter or leave it : while, at longer intervals, large mail steamers on their way to or from China or Australia spend a few hours in the port. An excellent band that would do credit to Vienna plays every day in the public places, and no European orchestra indulges in shorter pauses between the pieces. But the chief attraction of Honolulu to a European eye is its trees. Mangoes grow at the corners of the streets, and every garden is shaded by tropical foliage. The Acacia is found in many varieties — the golden Mohur, with its rich green leaves and brilliant red flowers, a sight worth crossing many miles of turbulent ocean to see; the Monkey Pod, with its lilac blossoms and sensitive leaves, which close upon one another at nightfall; the Tamarind, I20 The Modern Odyssey. with its pods filled with subacid fruit ; the Algaroba, with its rope-hke yellow flowers. The handsome Royal Palm waves its broad leaves over a grey stem marked with rings ; the Fan Palm and the Traveller's Palm — which yields a stream of pure water if an incision be made in the bark — intercept the rays of the sun. Every- where half-ripe dates are lying on the ground ; bamboos adorn green lawns ; the Papaia, another variety of palm, with the leaves of a fig-tree and the flowers of a jasmine, is not uncommon ; and within a stone's throw of a busy street, limes, alligator pears, bread-fruit, cocoanuts, mangoes, bananas, and pomegranates may be plucked. Pepper trees, Norfolk pines, and banyans with branches falling to the earth and taking root anew, stand among the palms, and the most common shrub in the gardens is the croton. Nor are flowers wanting. More hybiscus can be picked in a few minutes than all the conserva- tories of an English county could produce ; creepers with white flowers cover the garden fences ; oleanders, alamandas, and the purple leaves of the bourgainvillea which are flowers in appearance, grow as plentifully as hawthorn in a hedge. At the back of the city is the crater of an extinct volcano, to which the characteristically British name of Punch Bowl has been given. It is reached by an easy climb of half an hour, and the slight exertion is amply repaid by the view, and the cool breeze constantly blow- ing at the summit. At the foot of the hill is a green plain, with the tops of the trees rising to a uniform height above it, and forming, as it were, a carpet to it, out of which a few only of the buildings emerge ; for Honolulu is a city in a forest, and the houses, none of them being of great elevation, are almost completely hidden by the foliage. Towards the south lie the water meadows near the shore, and groves of cocoanuts in the OnSERVATIOXS UNDER THE HAWAIIAN FlAG. 121 distance. The hills of the western district of Oahu are seen faintly across an intervening arm of the sea, and a white streak of surf shows the position of the coral reefs, and encloses the island in a silver girdle of foam. A disused battery of dismounted guns overlooks the city from the brink of the crater. In the rear the volcanic ridges ascend gradually to the summit-line of the moun- tain chain which traverses the island, and their green slopes show the abundance of the rain that falls upon the heights. But it rarely happens that a shower lays the dust in Honolulu, for the clouds formed on the water-shed by the eastern trade winds are usually dissolved before they reach the zenith of the city. The clear air, the rich colouring by land and sea, the absence of all sombre and wintry hues, make the picture unrolled beneath the dumb crater very pleasing to the eye. A few miles from Honolulu lies the sea-side village of Waikiki. The road emerges from the city in an avenue of villas, surrounded by very beautiful gardens, on to a green plain, across which the hills send their tributary streams to the belt of clear water inside the coral reefs, and which is bounded by the brown and scarred slopes of another extinct volcano, known by the name of Diamond Head. A grove of cocoanuts, stand- ing at the base of the cone, is a conspicuous feature in the landscape. After leaving the suburb, the road tra\erses the irrigated fields where the bananas arc grown which supply America and Australia with fruit, liamboos and other tropical trees overhang it ; the handsome castor-oil plant flourishes in the waste places at the side ; and the pools formed b\' the water channels are bright with red lilies and gold-fish. The village of Waikiki stands on a common separated froni the sea by a row of cottages and a belt of cocoanuts. On the strand purple flowers 122 The Modern Odyssey. grow almost to the water's edge ; the little crabs scuttle in and out of their sandy haunts ; and within the coral breakwater, which robs the waves of half their mischief, the native outrigged canoes, dug out of a single trunk, pass to and fro. CHAPTER X. A VOYAGE ON THE SOUTH PACIFIC. August 6th. — At sea: Lat. ly" 27' N., Long. 159° 16' W. The Mariposa reached Honolulu yesterday morning from San Francisco, and was advertised to leave for New Zealand at 4 p.m., but at that hour many tons of coal had still to be stowed away in the bunkers, and it was nearly sunset before we were steaming out to sea. The delay caused great satisfaction to the dense mass of Hawaiians on the wharf, and it would be churlish to grudge them a prolongation of their simple pleasures. The Mariposa is a tolerably comfortable American steamer of about 3,000 tons, capable of doing her fifteen knots an hour without much difficulty. Many of the passengers of the Australia are on board, including some young men who have lately graduated at Oxford. They are full of high spirits, and spend most of their time in throwing things at each other. They sprawl over the deck, break the chairs, talk slang, wrestle and bear-fight in a playful way, and get up early and lounge around in scanty apparel. In their spare moments they play a feeble kind of cricket, and feel aggrieved if the American contingent occupy the quarter-deck with the equally feeble game of shuffleboard. This morning they put two fire-axes in the General's berth. They are good fellows of the egotistical type, with an irrepressible pre- judice against everything that is not British. 124 The Modern Odyssey. Ajigust 8//a— Lat. 6° 49' N., Long. 162^^ 44' W. The Australian and New Zealand newspapers, which the Zcalandia brought to Honolulu for the use of the Mariposa, are a welcome change after the shrieking sheets of the States. It is quite a relief to see a column of intelligence not disfigured by interpolated headings in violent language wrenched from the context, and to find a comparative freedom from personalities. Some of the American journals make one regret the invention of printing. We greatly miss the musical Hawaiians of the Australia; none of the Mariposa's passengers are musical, and the evenings, which last from six o'clock when dinner is over, until eleven when the electric light is extinguished, are broken only by a school - treat aftair of tea and cake at eight, and are very long and tedious. How pleasant it is when voyaging on a lonely ocean to hear the sound of a voice that recalls the far-away shores of Albion ! When one of the female passengers in the saloon asked for " 'oney," and spoke of " honions" and the " 'ealth hofficer," tears welled up into many eyes. August 9//!.— Lat. \° 56' N., Long. 164° 8' W. At nine in the eveningwe crossed the Line. The barbarous ceremonies customary on board British ships upon the occasion are not observed on board the American 3[ariposa, and the day passed away almost without incident. There was a fog for half-an-hour or so in the forenoon, and the steam whistle was blown once or twice, though it is very unlikely that there is a ship within several hundred miles of us. After sunset the Southern Cross came in sight, a little on the starboard bow. It should have been visible before, but hitherto the southern horizon has been clouded in the evening. The constellation is disappointing : it is not a very A Voyage on the South Pacific. 125 distinct feature in the sky, and the outHne of the four stars suggests a kite rather than a cross. August \2th. Lat. 13*^ 31' S., Long, 170° 20' W. The Southern Pacific appears on the chart to be so thickly studded with islands that it would seem that a ship could not sail for half a day without sighting some of them, yet the first land seen by Magellan on his voyage from Cape Horn across Polynesia was the Philippine Islands in the China Sea, though he must have passed through more than one of the clusters. On the voyage between Honolulu and Auckland the only land usually seen is Tutuila, an outlying island of the Samoan group. We sighted it at mid-day, and at 4 p.m., when the island was close abeam, the Mariposa's engines were stopped, in order to transfer a few mail bags to a German cutter which was waiting to take them to Samoa, sixty miles away. The green slopes of Tutuila, rising to a central table- land, contrast pleasantly with the monotonous waves we have been ploughing for a week, and seem so tantalising to us, whose only exercise has been pacing up and down the deck. An hour's ramble along the gleaming sands, 3r a climb up the hillside, would have been a delightful episode ; but there was no time to go on shore, much as we longed for it. A few canoes, full of natives of both sexes, came off to the ship. They are handsome and intelligent, and are well aware of the value of the dollar. The race of simple-minded savages, ready to part with half their possessions for a handful of beads or toys, is almost extinct. Some of the men clambered up the side, and offered war-clubs, said to be made in Berlin, for sale ; while others swam round the ship and dived for coins. They wear little clothing, but appear to take particular care of their hair, which they tone down to a dull chest- nut colour with a dressing of lime, and plaster with clay 126 The Modern Odyssey. When the screw began to revolve and the canoes fell astern, the men on deck threw the unsold clubs into the water, and quickly jumped over the side after them, and joined the shoal who were sporting in the little waves. Hardly a breath of wind was stirring as we lay off the island, and the rays of the sun beat fiercely down upon the deck ; but as soon as the Mariposa reached the open sea we met the south-east trade wind, and, for the first time since leaving the Sandwich Islands, felt comfortably cool. August 13///. — Lat. 18° 24' S., Long. 172*^ 24' W. The ladies played cricket, and the men played with the baby. She is a wan, quiet thing, and seems already weary of life. She will lie for hours on her pillow, hardly moving, except to lift her little hand in the air. Her beautiful eyes open in dreamy wonder at the waves, and she appears to be glad when the sun falls upon her. She watches the sea, and the people as they pass by on the deck, but she never cries ; she turns instinctively to the light, and sometimes a faint expression of mute pleasure comes over her pale face. She recognises her new friends, and takes hold of their hands gently with her feeble fingers, but her touch is hardly felt. Poor, sweet wee thing ! August ijth. — Lat. 32° 12' S., Long. 178'' 47' 1^:. Though yesterday was the 15th, to-day is the 17th. A whole day was thrown overboard as we crossed the 1 80th meridian. Some vessel bound to the east will pick it up, so it will not be lost to Time. The loss of a day is not to be regretted. Most of us would have done foolish things ; and at least we should have eaten more than is good for us. There are many critical periods when it would be very convenient to obliterate a day from the calendar^ as Captain Ilayward of the Muri/Odii has (iunc with a stroke of his pen. A Voyage on the South Pacific. 127 In this region of the south we seem to have escaped beyond the reach of Time. Let one of the many islands that are threaded on to the i8oth meridian be chosen as a place of refuge for those who rebel against his tyranny, where the almanack could be manipulated at will by stepping across the line of extreme longitude. Thus, any date that was de trop could be cancelled by a stroll before breakfast. No one need have a birthday, and all inconvenient anniversaries would disappear. At noon we were 344 miles distant from Auckland, N.Z. The voyage has been pleasant; the Pacific has maintained the reputation of its name; and the passen- gers have improved upon acquaintance. The stewards are uncouth, and the cooking is bad, but things might be worse. To-morrow, if all is well, we shall be in Austral- asia. All the news that has been pent up during tlie last few weeks will be let loose upon us. In twenty-four hours we shall be in telegraphic and postal communica- tion with the rest of the world — a prospect which is not altogether alluring to some of us who have been sailing for a month across the calm waters of the Pacific. August i^th. — A bright, fresh morning, and the sea whitened by a brisk breeze from the south-east. The shapes of the outlying islands were visible on the horizon before breakfast, and the violet tint of the water gradually changed into a green slate colour.- At ten we were steam- ing into the Gulf of Hauraki, abreast of Great Barrier Island, a hilly, volcanic mass, showing no signs either of cultivation or of habitation. Its northern extremity is curiously broken off into pinnacles, springing abruptly out of the sea ; and the hillocks and rough ground upon the sides produce very pretty effects of light and shade. Midway in the entrance to the Gulf is the Little liarrier, a regularly shaped island having low cliffs on cither side, which rise by gentle slopes to a central rugged ridge. 128 The Modern Odyssey. The Gulf, at the head of which stands the city of Auck- land, is fifty miles in length, and is land-locked on three sides. The mainland appears to be generally flat, except where the craters of extinct volcanoes lift their heads above the normal level ; and as this is the middle of winter, the colouring is sombre. At 2.30 p.m. we were abreast of Rangitoto, a wide, low island, resembling a shield both in plan and in outline, for it is quite symmetrically shaped, and the boss is formed by a volcanic cone in the centre. A four-sailed windmill of English design, standing on the hill behind the city, is the first object that strikes the eye on entering Auckland harbour. A slight examination of our hand baggage only, comprised the whole of the initiatory rite at the Custom House, and with very little delay a crowd of travellers, who had been cooped in enforced inaction within an area oi 300 feet by 40, found themselves roaming at large upon a spacious island ; and never before did it seem such a luxury to climb a steep hill ! Not only did the Northern Club extend its hospitality to some of the ]\Iariposds passengers, but also telegraphed their names on to the club at Napier, in order that they might have a picd-d- terre on their arrival in Hawke's Bay, It was very pleasant to sit down once more to a well-cooked dinner, in the company of English gentlemen, after a fortnight's experience of the experiments of the Mariposa s cook, in the society of nondescript travellers, and Americans who ate water-melons by the chunk and talked perpetually of dollars. The weather is bright but cool, and though but a {q.\v days have elapsed since we crossed the Line, a blazing fire in the club smoking-room was acceptable. A farewell visit to the Mariposa — which sailed for Sydney at 10 p.m. — to say farewell to such of our late fcllow-passengcrs A Voyage on the South Pacific. 129 who arc good-looking or agreeable — brought the first day in New Zealand to a close. A very cursory ex- amination makes out Auckland to be a soberly pro- sperous and comfortable place, devoid of the rush and bustle of an homologous American city, with which, in its cleanliness, order, and good general appearance, it favourably contrasts ; and the English look of the inhabitants is so striking that it is difficult not to rush up to them at once, and shake hands with them all as old friends ! August \(^tJi. — If it is not rash to generalise from a single instance, the trains on the New Zealand railways are the slowest in the world. The distance between Auck- land and Oxford is about 140 miles, yet the train to-day spent more than eight hours in covering them. Even a Welsh train could give the 8 a.m. from Auckland a start of two hours and a beating over the same course. The stations, however, are neat buildings, and the line is fenced in. For some miles after leaving Auckland the railway traverses a country which only differs in ap- pearance from many parts of the North of England, Anglesc}-, and Pembrokeshire in the volcanic cones which are frequently a conspicuous feature of the land- scape. The fields and pastures are neatly separated by stone walls, and the yellow blossoms of the furze give colour to the scene. There is a scarcity of plants of larger growth, the Pinus iiisignis and the trcc-fcrn being the only growths larger than a slirub. Further towards the .south the country assumes a character of its own. The low, undulating hills are co\'ered with fern scrub and ti-shrub, out of which cabbage trees, a plant resembling a palm, rear their heads here and there. Blue mountains appear in the distance, and the W'aikato River meanders slow!) o\er a plain in which few signs of cultivation are seen. At almost ever\- station a Maori 130 The Modern Odyssey. woman is loafing about, smoking a briar-root pipe — not a lovely sight. Oxford, where the railway across the North Island at present terminates, is a solitary settle- ment of a few wooden houses in the midst of the scrub. A greater contrast to the English city of that name could not be found. The evening was cool and fine, and a stroll through the dense undergrowth of w-ithered ferns was very de- lightful after a day spent in a sauntering train. Hardly a breath of air was stirring as the sun went down and enriched the brown hues of the surrounding hills with his red light. August 20th. — The habit of early rising is one of the most demoralising forms of dissipation. It encourages selfishness, egotism, and pride. The early riser is in- sufferable. He is always reminding his friends of his performance, and is as proud of having seen the sun appear in the east as a cat is of her first kittens. He has no respect for the feelings of those who do not care to get up before the world is well aired, but whistles, sings, and makes a noise with his bath and his boots on purpose to disturb tlicm. He inhales with the morning breeze an arrogant and provoking air of superiorit}', and pretends to domineer over the world on the strength of a restless disposition which prevents him taking his rest at customary hours. Still, there are occasions when early rising, like homicide, is excusable — as, for example, when a traveller has before him a journey by road of two hundred miles, and when the coach leaves Oxford at 7 a.m. for the hot springs of Rotorua, thirty-five miles distant. The morn- ing was so fine, bracing, and frosty, that the loss of a few hours of repose did not matter for once in a way, esi)ecially as the goal of the day's journey was the most wonderful district of New Zealand. For about fifteen A Voyage on the South Pacific. 131 miles the road runs through a plain covered with ti-tree scrub, ferns, and cabbage trees, and dotted over with hillocks and mounds. The level country is then left behind, and the track, having passed through a solitary station and a grove of red pine and totara, is carried along the side of a ravine, where the song of the linnet is sometimes heard, into the bush, through which it wriggles for many a long mile. On either hand the tall trunks of forest trees, unknown in Europe, overhang the rough way, rare ferns are seen growing on the slopes and shallow cuttings, and the solitude is unbroken by any living creature. Strange forms of life and death occur — such as the vine which clasps the red pine and kills it with its embrace, and becomes a tree itself, while still holding the dead trunk in its embrace ; or the caterpillar, which feeds on a fungus until it is gorged and dies, when a plant sprouts from it, and a twig is seen growing from its mouth. At last there is a break in the trees, and Lake Rotorua and the Island of Mokoia appear in the distance, and on the further shore a column of steam rising out of a hot spring. The water of the lake has the colour of diluted milk, owing to the quantity of white dust which fell into it a year ago, at the time of the eruption of Tarawcra ; and the volcano, with a little steam issuing from it, is visible to the south-cast in the midst of hills covered with grey mud. The road turns toward the south, and after a few miles of scrub, the pillars of vapour ascending from the geysers of Ohine- mutu and Whakarewarewa came into view across the plain along the shore, and we entered the enchanted town of Rotorua, where many columns of steam float upwards from gardens and waste places ; where the rills by the roadside are smoking ; where caldrons of mud are seething by the lake shore, and all kinds of chemical T 2 132 The Modern Odyssey. fumes are exhaled from crevices in the paths and holes in the banks. Ohinemutu is a Maori village, built upon a neck of land jutting out into the lake. Some years ago the land sunk several feet, and now many of the trees are standing in the water. The township of Rotorua is the European settlement surrounding the native village. It is a pretty place in the midst of fine scenery, somewhat spoilt by the prim thermal sanatory establishment which the Colonial Government has set down in the plain between the hills and the lake. Whakarewarewa is another native village a short distance inland. It stands on the banks of a little river in the midst of geysers and hot springs. Boiling waters burst out of the earth and coat the stones with mineral deposits ; fragments, stratified in layers of red and white, of sedimentary rocks that have been ejected from the bowels of the earth, lie in beds of moss ; in the densest part of the ti-tree scrub are open basins, with miniature volcanoes and craters throwing up hot liquid mud ; from the mouths of caverns, hidden by flowers and ferns, issues the smoke generated in that internal furnace concealed somewhere beneath green growths which the subterranean heat makes so luxuriant ; the exposed sands of the river are heated and fuming, while the shallow water near the shore effervesces with gas bubbles, and white stems of vapour rise slowly through the calm air to the blue sky above. The commonplace closely attends the sublime in every quarter of the globe ; and here, in the very heart of the most wonderful region of New Zealand, families of Maoris are publicly soaking themselves in the mud caldrons while their food is being boiled in an adjoining liot spring. Since the destruction of the pink and white terraces by the eruption of the long dormant Tarawera in June, A Voyage on the South Pacific. 133 1886, Rotorua has lost its chief attraction. Whether the terraces are still existent is doubtful, but, at all events, they are covered by thirty feet or more of mud. It is uncertain in what form this mud fell. It is probable that the volcano ejected enormous quantities of dust, and that the vapour generated when the earthquake cleft the bed of Lake Rotomahana and dropped its waters into the abysmal furnace, precipitated the dust in the form of mud on to the mountains and valleys. The whole district is covered with a grey blanket, out of which no green thing has yet emerged. Some portions of the hillsides have been already scored by the rains into channels and ravines. At Oahu, in the Sandwich Islands, the same formation may be seen, but there a much longer period has elapsed since the ordinary forces of nature began to work upon volcanic ruin. August 22nd. — Another day of early rising, for it was necessary to start at seven in order to reach Wairakei, threescore miles distant by a rough and lonely road, before sunset. The first part of the journey is through a broken, desolate country, covered with ti-tree, ferns, and an occasional patch of iris. Square rocks are perched like castles on the hills ; cliffs and palisades shut out the view, and in one place a row of dolomites stands near the track. The bones of horses and sheep lie by the roadside, but of human life there is hardly any sign. After many long miles, the scene suddenly changes into an alluvial plain enclosed by hills, on which are marked the terraces of prehistoric lakes and rivers. No more delightful spot for a halt on a long journey than Atcamure could be desired. It lies about midway between Ohinemutu and Wairakei, where the road crosses a gorge of the Waikato on a wooden bridge. An open space in the ti-tree scrub opposite a bluff on the further 134 The Modern Odyssey. shore was chosen as our luncheon hall. The river rushed by at our feet, and the lark sang overhead. It was a wild scene. Rocks that had been brought down in the course of ages from the distant mountains were strewn thickly upon the banks ; a hundred yards lower down a water- fall was roaring; and Pohaturoa, a steep, pyramidal hill, formerly the fortress of a Maori tribe, only accessible by a narrow path on one side, loomed over all. Never did one hour pass so pleasantly and so quickly; and once more we were on the road, climbing into the table-land in the heart of the North Island. Mountains rose in the distance on all sides, and Tongariro and Ruapehu, the former an occasionally active, the latter an extinct volcano, were faintly visible in the south. When we had jolted over fifty miles of road from Ohinemutu we left the highway, and followed a still rougher bush track which leads to Wairakci, where, within an area of a few acres, all the varieties of volcanic hydraulics and pneumatics are contained. A swim in a natural hot sulphur bath on the Kiriohinekai creek repaid all the fatigue of the road, and soon we were smoking before a wood fire in a Maori wkarc, a little cottage built of bulrushes and thatched with grass, surrounded by beds of violets, and within reach of the murmur of the hot springs. August 2yd. — Lake Taupo, the next stage in the overland journey, being only seven miles distant from Wairakei, it was possible to take things easily this morning ; and, after breakfast at a reasonable hour, we strolled quietly up to the glen of geysers, which is, in fact, an exhibition of natural machinery in motion and of natural products in course of manufacture. In huge goblets on a ledge of the hillside a liquid resembling paint is boiling ; in one of the bowls it is blue, in another pink, perfectly uniform in colour and consistency ; close A Voyage on the South Pacific. 135 by Tuhuatahi, a geyser of the clearest and purest water sends up a pillar of snow-white steam to the sky. The basin is lined with a coral-like, silicious deposit. Within a short distance, and half hidden by a natural ledge of rock, is Terekereke, the black spring which is as capri- cious as a woman, and which, at irregular intervals, throws up a jet of boiling water. Nga Mahanga, or the Twins, is a basin divided into two portions by a mass in the shape of a sponge, which, every few minutes, shoots up a body of water to the height of ten feet or more. Another fountain, termed the " Donkey Engine," dis- charges its stream with a reverberating thud, due prob- ably to the sudden choking of the water in an internal chamber behind the orifice. The geysers when not in action give little sign of the imprisoned force within. There is a hole in the rock, with perhaps a little vapour issuing from it ; in a moment, without warning, a volume of steam and boiling water rushes out and deluges the incrustatcd stones around ; a few seconds more, the paroxysm is over, and the irascible nymph of the fountain is appeased. From beneath a pool comes a metallic sound, like the blow of a steam-hammer. The effect is wonderful and weird ; the sounds rise mysteriously out of the water, but the machine is hidden and never can be revealed. The noise is supposed to be caused by the rush of water into a vacuum, formed b\- the con- densation of the steam. A warm river, fed by the hot springs and gc}-scrs, runs through the ravine, which is a natural hot-house. The Osmunda and man\' other beautiful ferns grow on the banks, where the steam affords them sufficient heat and moisture even now, when the snow is Ix'ing on the mountains. Upon the sheer sides of the gorge are patches of brilliant veirctable and mineral colours. The soft and 13^ The Modern Odyssey. treacherous ground feels warm to the feet, and it is necessary to handle the bright red earth — whose colour, however, is natural, and not due to heat — with caution, or the fingers which touch it will be burnt. It is strange to find a furnace in the midst of ferns and mosses, and to have the hand which plucks a frond scorched by the soil in which it grows. From Wairakei to Lake Taupo is a pleasant after- noon's walk. Midway are the Huka Falls, the most lovely spot in New Zealand, where the Waikato rushes through a narrow gorge about a hundred yards in length and fifty feet in breadth. The river issues from a calm pool into a channel between perpendicular walls. At the lower end is a waterfall. The river is a bright sapphire blue, but at the cataract and the rapids there is a slight but very lovely tinge of pink in the foam. The edge of the gorge is covered with shrubs, and the crevices in the walls arc filled with lichens and moss. It is an enchant- ing spot that will be remembered when Niagara is forgotten. It is as it was long before a European set foot in the island. Nothing has been done to mar its beauty, and hardly a trace of man can be discerned. Not one of the ferns of the lower pool has been stolen ; no wooden shanty stands upon the river terraces ; no one has touched the stems of the trees growing upon the sloping banks of the widened river below the gorge. We climbed a hill, and, as the sun was setting, entered the village of Tapuhaharuru, the Place of the Silent h\)otstcps, on the shore of Lake Taupo, where the Waikato leaves it. Aiii^ust 24///. — Long before sensible people were .-stirring, the driver of the coach was calling upon his horses to face the long hill which gives access to the table-land cast of Lake Taupo. A keen and strong A Voyage on the South Pacific. 137 wind was blowing, and Tongariro and Ruapehu were clad in snow and almost hidden in cloud. The country is barren and desolate, and unlike anything in Europe or America, but it is by no means ugly. It is covered with ti-tree and strewn with pumice-stone, and so remote that the nearest railway is a hundred miles away. Not a settlement was passed, except a little inn where we made a halt for luncheon at mid-day. The lake remained in sight until the watershed was reached. Though the sun was shining brightly in the morning, the snow began to fall in the afternoon, and it was lying in the pass by which the zigzag road crosses the Pakiranui Mountains. The scenery would have been fine if the atmosphere had been clear enough to render it visible. The pleasantest part of a journey on rough tracks is the end of it ; and when the roadside inn at Tarawera came in sight, shortly before sunset, the feeling of de- pression caused by a winter's journey in a snowstorm across a range of New Zealand mountains suddenly vanished away. The cosmopolitan character of a British colony's population was shown in the person of the land- lord, for who would expect to find him an intelligent Dane who had served in the Maori war, and who was well informed on current l'2uropean politics '! August 25///. — Hirec jaded travellers bound for Napier were the precursors of tlic sun this morning, for he had not risen above the peaks when they were toiling up "the difficult heights of the iced mountain air." Two ranges lie in the wa\- between Tarawera and Napier, and a snowstorm had made the road almost im- passable. Between them the Mohaka river was saunter- ing through the land, and it was necessar\- to humour it and to descend man)- hundred feet before we could scale the Maungahururu range. Near the summit of tlie first range is a Maori village, and in it a house that is tc^pn, J 3^ The Modern Odyssey. namely, one that cannot be entered because a Maori had died in it. It took more than five hours to travel twenty miles, and for the greater part of the distance we trudged through the snow to spare the horses. A joyful sight met our eyes at last — the familiar blue waters of the South Pacific and the City of Napier and Cape Kid- nappers shining in the sun. Yet the battle was not yet over, for between us and our destination lay twenty-eight miles of bad road, over which the springless coach jolted and tossed and heaved like a pea on a drum. The ordeal was broken for an hour when we halted at Pohui for luncheon. The road fords the river Esk no less than fifty-tliree times, and often the bed of the stream is used as the track ; and it thus became evident that the bed of a New Zealand river is often smoother and better than a New Zealand highway. In one place the spot is pointed out where a driver was lately killed ; and in another, where the road and the river run side by side, a coach was carried away by a freshet, and the carcases of the horses are passed in succession lower down. At Petani, a few miles from Napier, the road is in better order, and a district of pastures, fields, and houses — the first appear- ance of fertility in the whole distance of two hundred miles from Oxford — is entered. The journey was almost over. We went along an evil-smelling tongue of land which separates the lagoon from the sea ; crossed a wooden bridge and entered Napier, where a delightful haven of rest was found in the Ilawke's Bay Club. As a toothache is almost worth enduring for the sake of the exquisite feeling of pleasure and relief which comes when the pain departs, so the jolting of the journey enhanced the delight of a quiet evening with the knowledge that on the morrow there need be no rising with the lark, or with whatever fowl takes the A Voyage on the South Pac/fic. 139 place of that restless bird in New Zealand. These words are written at the window of a room overlooking the shore of the Pacific. The moon is shining, and the stars of strange constellations are bright ; the long, low waves of the Southern Ocean are breaking on the beach below, and how pleasant is their music ! August 26/k. — The evil effects of the pernicious habit of early rising remain long after the practice has been discontinued, and cannot easily be thrown off. The traveller who, during many weeks, has been roused soon after sunrise (at sea) by the crew washing the decks, and (on land) by the voice of a hotel waiter or club steward reminding him while it is yet dark that the coach or train starts in half an hour, finds difficulty in sleeping comfortably as he should do when he is happily restored to a normal condition. Thus it happened to-day that though the programme included only the sights of a small and very quiet city in New Zealand, which could be seen by any lazy individual in an hour, and still leave time for rumination, yet we were all as wakeful as the early worm. Napier is a clean, neat, well-built town of wooden houses, on a bluff at the mouth of an inlet of Hawke's Bay, the extremities of which are marked by the faint blue outlines of Cape Kidnappers and the Mahia Penin- sula, while on the landward side the arc is coni})leted by the snowy peaks of the mountains. It is not a stirring or noisy place, and it resembles a quiet sca-sidc town in England. The roads are good and the pavement excellent — features which a traveller latcl}' arri\ cd from the United States notices at once. If Napier does not show much evidence of wealth, there is none of poverty, and it is a suitable retreat for a commonplace English- man of stead}' habits and sim]:ile tastes. The beach is good, and not disfigured as yet by bathing machines. 140 The Modern Odyssey. August 2'/th. — Although the distance between Napier and Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, is less than two hundred miles, and although, with the exception of a gap of sixteen miles, a railway runs throughout, yet the journey occupies more than fifteen hours, and involves an early start. However, we were rewarded by a sight we should never have risen to see for its own sake — the sun emerging from the Pacific, and remaining for a little w^hile underneath a bank of golden clouds which were suspended above the horizon ; a scene beautiful beyond the power of words to describe. If only the pheno- mena of sunrise could occur at a less inconvenient hour of the day, they would be more appreciated of the people. For some distance out of Napier the line passes through a bright and attractive agricultural and pastoral district, where the fields are bordered by gorse hedges, and cattle are grazing and lambs are at play ; and, after a few hours, enters the bush, where the scenery must have been fine before the incendiary settler began his work of civilisation by setting fire to the forest trees. Woodville, the present terminus of the railway, is an interesting example of a colonial town slowly expanding in a forest clearing. It has not yet gone beyond the stage of having charred stumps as its only suburbs. Between Woodville and Palmerston the line is not yet finished, and this part of the journey is performed by coach. The road, which is as good as many English highways, winds for several miles along the gorge of the beautiful Manawatu River, and then emerges on to a cultivated plain. Palmerston is a spacious and well laid- out town. The streets are broad and clean ; a handsome square occui)ics the centre ; the railway station is a neat structure ; and although the absence of stone and brick buildings gives it the look of a city of dolls' houses, its A Voyage on the South Pacific. 141 appearance and air of orderly comfort arc creditable to the inhabitants. August 2gth. — The most remarkable feature of Wellington is its great name. The city is built upon the side of a hill rising from a land-locked sound in Cook's Straits, and appears to be cramped by its situation. All that the guide-books can say of it is that it contains the largest wooden building in the world — the Government Offices. It is traversed by a tramway, on which cars run at long intervals, and, except upon the wharves, little is stirring. There is no turmoil of commerce in the streets, but only a slight fidget of business. We left in the JManapouri for the South Island at 4 p.m. As the North Island dwindles in the wake of the ship, its weird sights pass away, and become a vivid recollection. The volcanic district, with its horizon of craters, its overwhelmed lakes, and new springs gushing out where before only the dew moistened the earth, its geysers and fumaroles and troughs of boiling water as clear as crystal, must always remain firmly planted in the memory, as well as the lonely bush and heaving hills covered with pumice-stone and scrub with which it is encompassed. The Maori is there, a remnant of the l)ast. He still builds his ivliarc, and weaves his kit of ilax ; but the juoa, the strange bird without wings which no white man has ever seen, is gone, and the INIaori has dressed himself up in European clothes. The iiioa did not die too soon. August 30///. — For five hours after da}-light this morning the Maiuipouri was groping in a dense fog along Tegasus Bay and Bank's Peninsula. Now and then a breath of wind withdrew the veil for a moment, and disclosed an inlet on a rocky shore ; and it was not until mid-day that the fog lifted and revealed tiie entrance to Lyttelton Harbour. Meanwhile, the sound 142 The Modern Odyssey. of the waves at the foot of the cHfifs was very distinct, and in many places the land could not have been more than two hundred yards distant from the Manapouri as she drifted along the coast, with her engines occasionally moving a few revolutions ahead in order to give steerage way. Lyttelton is a sheltered harbour in the hilly penin- sula which juts out into the Pacific from the Canterbury Plain, and a railway tunnel that would be thought long even in America, connects it with Christchurch, seven miles inland. Another day and night spent upon a ship -^though little fault could be found with her — enhanced the comfort of the Christchurch Club. September 1st. — The winter is not yet over, but the weather to-day is that of an English ist of September. The sun is warm, the air just cool enough to be pleasant, and a slight haze completes the resemblance to an autumn day at home. The Canterbury Plain, with its green, fertile fields and quiet beauty, stretches for many miles along the east coast of the South Island. The Port Hills overlook it as it lies unrolled at their feet, a belt of pastures and cornlands. As far as the eye can reach towards the south and towards the central mountains it is cultivated. Groves of green trees are dotted here and there, and gorse hedges, bright with yellow blossoms, divide the fields ; columns of smoke rise slowly upwards or drift to leeward, where the grass or the furze is burning ; willows mark the course of the sluggish streams which flow towards the marshes on the shore ; the blue Pacific, which seldom falsifies the reputation of its name, bounds the plain upon one side, and the dim mountains, sprinkled with the snow that makes them hardly dis- tinguishable from the clouds resting upon them, shelters it on the west and north ; and the skylark hovers over every field. A Voyage on the South Pacific. 143 The Cathedral spire rises out of the plain, and lends a still more English appearance to the landscape, while Christchurch itself is not unlike an English cathedral city. It is quiet and orderly, and somewhat dull. It has emerged from the chrysalis stage of wooden buildings, and many of the houses and stores are handsome ; and in the suburbs stands the largest and handsomest edifice in New Zealand — the Lunatic Asylum of the Provincial District of Canterbury. The river Avon, fringed with willows brought by French emigrants from Napoleon's grave at St. Helena, flows through the town in a stream as clear as a mountain torrent. Although all the trees are exotic, there is no lack of them in Christchurch and its suburbs. Oaks, elms, poplars, and willows, all planted during the last forty years, give ample shade, and have transformed what was a treeless marsh into a wooded plain. Broad roads in- tersect the city, and the only fault that can be found with them is their mathematical straightness. A park and a woodland ramble lie just outside the boundaries, and a cricket ground close by is one of the best in the world. The traveller who stands under the trees in Hagley Park and looks back at the city in the distance finds it difficult to realise that he is twelve thousand miles away from England. All the associations are English. The stone buildings of the Public School upon the banks of the river already look old, and all the customary features are there — chapel, big school, masters' houses, fives courts, swimming bath, and notice board. A cathedral spire soars above the trees, as at Salisbury, and another Avon glides under its shadow. None of the rough-and-ready husbandry of a new country is seen near Christchurch ; the hedges are as trim and the pastures almost as neat as those in the Weald of Kent. There are country houses surrounded 144 The Modern Odyssey. by well-kept gardens and lawns, cottages covered with creepers, and the orchards and paddocks of an English Home County. A gate by the roadside is opened, and two pretty girls on horseback come out for their after- noon ride ; and on the other side of the hedge are heard the familiar words of "deuce" and "vantage," and the thud of the tennis ball against the racket. At the club will be found a society of men who only differ from English country gentlemen in being more intelligent and better informed. An hour may be profitably spent in the Museum, which contains a unique collection of inoa skeletons. That extraordinary bird has never been seen alive by any European, but its bones are still occasionally found in the bush. The skeletons are remarkable for the great size and strength of the bones of the leg, and for the absence even of rudimentary wings which appear in a still existing New Zealand bird of the same genus — the kiiui. The moa occasionally attained such a stature that when it was stalking in the ti-trce scrub its eyes must have been raised thirteen feet above the ground. It is not known at what period the surviving lonely and melancholy fowl surveyed the world in solitude after all his companions had passed away, but it was probably in the early years of the i8th century. September 2nd. — A halt by the way to enjoy a little pastoral interlude. Coldstream, a sheep farm belonging to S., being within a few miles of a station on the railway to Dunedin, and the road to it being warranted by authority to be in good order, we gladly consented to visit it. The morning express for the south steamed along the Canterbury Plain at the rate of eighteen knots an hour, and was stopped by signal at Hinds to dis- charge the travellers bound for Coldstream. The country is a dead lc\el intersected by torrential streams, whose A Voyage on the South Pacii-ic. 145 shallow beds, in some cases nearly a mile in width, are filled only when the mountain snows are melting. The late bitter experience of the roads of the North Island made the drive of ninety minutes on a level track from the station to Coldstream a really delightful episode. The homestead takes its name from a little rivulet which intersects it. It is a solitary but not a lonely spot. Thirty miles away to the west are the mountains ; but so pure and clear is the air that they seemed to be within an hour's walk, and the smoke of the grass and gorse fires could plainly be discerned ascending the cliffs and filling the ravines. All around are fields divided off by furze hedges in bloom ; or open pastures of tussocks in the possession of fat sheep moving lazily about, and hardly disturbing the hares which abound. On one side the run is bounded by the river Rangitata ; on another by the Pacific, whose surf beats constantly upon the bank of shingle (which is a section of the Ninety Miles Beach running southward from Bank's Peninsula) outside a narrow lagoon lying under a range of low cliffs. \ few- groves of gum-trees stand like islands in the midst of the plain, and the white and purple hills overlook it from the west. The collies playing around the farm buildings, the sparrows chirping in the wattle trees, the gulls hover- ing over the fields, were there to remind us of home. We wandered about all the afternoon, shot a few hares, and came back to smoke in the verandah towards the setting sun, to think of far-awa}- things and people, and to talk over old Cambridge da}-s. Then darkness fell upon the plain ; the mountains were hidden in the gloom ; the Southern Cross appeared ; and all was still, except the murmur of the Pacific waves on the shore, which was the bourn of their long journey from the Antarctic Ocean. So ended a ver\', ver}' pleasant da\-. Septcvibcr V'd. — One hundred and sixt>--s!.\- miles hy 146 The Modern Odyssey. train in eight hours, through Timaru, Oamaru, Totara, Pukcteraki, Omimi, Waikonaiti, Kurtigi, and a host of other places with musical Maori names ; across a range of mountains, and along a fiord, where at last the welcome lights of Dunedin were seen reflected in the water. September ^th. — The shrewd intelligence of the Scotch is nowhere more plainly shown than in their practice of leaving their native hills as soon as they have the opportunity. About forty years ago a party of Caledonians landed in New Zealand, and, with the same perseverance which they would have displayed in endeavouring to understand a joke, set to work to build a New Edinburgh which they called Dunedin, on the coast of Otago. It is a clean, dull place, with no more pretensions to beauty than a Banffshire village. Scotch names predominate ; the Scotch accent is heard in the streets ; the inevitable statue of Burns stands in the chief square ; but the bagpipes are happily absent. A stream, called the Water of Lcith, runs through the city, and a Scotch mist frequently obliterates the view. The suburbs and adjoining villages of Roslyn, Portobello, Burnside, Abbotsford, Stirling, and Kelso also testify to the nationality of the first settlers, who, like all exiles, named their new homes after the places that were dear to them in the fatherland — a touching custom, which is at least as old as the time of the Trojan War, and which serves to mitigate the pain of banishment by the means of mere verbal association. In Dunedin, no less than in other New Zealand towns, the charred beams of half-burnt wooden houses and the bare walls of gutted shops constantly meet the eye. The frequent occurrence of destructive fires is ascribed by some people to the inflammable nature of the kauri pine, which is almost universally used in A Voyage on the South Pacific. 147 building, and by others to the depression of trade. In hard times a fire is the easiest way of realising un- productive capital. The evil has become so serious that the insurance offices now insist on rebuilding burnt premises instead of paying the sum for which the latter were insured. September ^tJi. — The morning train left Dunedin punctually, and after sauntering easily across country, reached Invcrcargill at 5 p.m. From the etymology of the word and from the analogy of Scotch names it might be supposed that Invcrcargill was a town at the mouth of the River Cargill, just as Inverness is a town at the mouth of the Ness. There is, however, no river Cargill ; but there was a pioneer sea-captain of that name, to whom the early settlers did honour by calling the place after him, and coining the blundering word Invcrcargill. Still, the place seems fairly prosperous ; the roads are wide ; some of the streets are handsome ; and an im- portant municipal official, the lamplighter, goes his rounds on horseback. His appearance as he caracoles up to a lamp-post with a flaming spear in his hand is weird and unearthly. Septejuber gt/i. — The trains of the New Zealand Government Railway take little more than an hour to perform the journey of eighteen miles between Invcr- cargill and the Bluff, as the line passes through a level country. The Bluff is a comfortable haven at the extreme south of the South Island. The harbour is large, and the number of houses small ; and apparently tleprcssion of trade must have been much felt here, as last year the town was burnt down. The Taraivcra was advertised to sail soon after noon for Tasmania and Melbourne, but it was nearly 5 p.m. before we started. September lot/i. — At sea : Lat. 45^ 56' S., Long. 163° 3' E. The cold south wind (how oddly this K 2 148 The Modern Odyssey. Sounds ! ) has been blowing all day, and there is a choppy sea. Sea birds follow the ship, and we are never without a winged escort. It is hard to understand how they can keep pace with the Tarmuera, for their wings appear to be almost stationary ; yet they fly against the wind, swoop to the right or left, dart down to the wave crest, skim along the surface, and rise again to the masthead without a perceptible quiver of their pinions. The wings of the albatross especially seem to be fixed as in a frame for many minutes at a time, yet he never lags behind. September 12th. — Lat. 43° 53' S., Long. 153° 28' E. At noon yesterday we were about midway between New Zealand and Tasmania. The bitter wind from the south is still blowing, and the Tarawera is lively. The only warm place in the ship is the starboard side of the funnel casing. The clear blue of the tropical Pacific has become a sombre greenish grey — not very translucent. With the aid of two squaresails, a jib, and mainsail, the run of the last twenty-four hours rose to 277 knots. September i^th. — The Tarauera arrived at the wharf at Hobart before sunrise, having come up the river during the night. The town is finely situated, and is almost surrounded by hills, now sprinkled with snow; but in- ternally it is not very attractive, though the streets are wide and clean. There was therefore no inducement to postpone the departure for Launccston beyond the 8 a.m. train, which appears, after experience of the New Zealand railways, to run at a headlong speed, for it is timed to cover a distance of one hundred and thirty miles in less than six hours. At the station a great insult was offered to a dcck- cliair. The officials refused to regard it as personal ''-'ft^''dney Har- bour, sometimes venture to compare Adelaide to Florence ; and as it is now accessible by railway from Melbourne, every traveller with a few days to spare can judge forhimsclf how farthe comparison can be maintained. The distance is about five hundred miles, and the express covers it in the respectable time of eighteen hours. A short halt is made at the quiet town of Gcclong, whence the train runs for fifty miles without stopping to J^allarat, the City of Gold. Whatever l^allarat ma)- have been in the rough times which followed the discovery of the alluring metal — when on one occasion the claim of the Crown to the gold as treasure trove * rendered it necessary to employ a line regiment of British infantry to coerce the miners and their leader, an Irishman, who afterwards rose to honour, * A similar claim to the gold lately discovered in Wales has been asserted and maintained without bloodshed. L 2 164 The Modern Odyssey. and was lately Speaker of the Legislative Assembly — it is now a well-built, peaceable, and attractive city. It bears no outward sign of the fierce rush and struggle of its young days, and the delirium of the gold fever has long since been subdued. The streets are wide and clean, and planted not only with the indigenous gum- tree, but also with elms, pines, and oaks ; and thus the chief defect in Australian scenery — the monotony of the foliage — has been remedied. Ballarat will be one of the fairest cities in Australia when, in the course of a generation or two, these trees shall have advanced to maturity. It is surrounded by the rich hills where the gold is quarried, and on one side it is touched by Lake Wendouree, a pretty sheet of water lined with willows and pines. The Botanical Gardens, on the further shore, are especially beautiful, as, in addi- tion to flowers and shrubs, poplars, firs, and chestnuts have been planted, and the exotics have taken kindly to their new home. The suburb of Ballarat adjacent to the lake surpasses Brighton or Caulficld. The houses are not large, but they are covered with roses and flowering creepers. Hedges of hawthorn enclose the gardens ; the laurels are greener than in the chill north, and the white lilacs in blossom are an enchanting sight. When the scent of the flowers fills the air, and a hundred colours meet the eye ; when the sky above is unclouded, and the sun is streaming through the foliage of English trees in Ballarat, all desire to visit the moun- tains in which Nature has carefully hidden the coveted metal passes away. The mines are scattered over the scarred hill-side, and the wounds can never be effaced ; but the flowers are close at hand, and far more lovely than rocks sparkling here and there with a morsel of gold. Horace once commended the man who could re- frain from looking back at piled-up gold : what a delight- 0.\ THE Shore of the Southern Ocean. 165 ful ode he would have written on Lake Wendource and the flowers and green leaves of Ballarat, set in the midst of the mountains where the wild gold grows ; and how pleasantly he would have assured us that it is better to light upon a rose in a garden than to find a heap of gold in the hills ! From Ballarat the line, after crossing the Grampians and the Pyrenees — two Australian ranges which lie closer together and are less lofty than their prototypes in Europe — gradually descends to the South Australian border. It does not often happen that any doubt exists as to the State in which a place is situated, but a cer- tain district lying near the western boundary of Victoria is in this ambiguous condition. When South Australia was constituted an independent colony, a scientific fron- tier was made the dividing line between it and New South Wales, which at that time included Victoria, in- stead of a natural boundary, such as a river or the ridge of a mountain range. The frontier was, in fact, so scientific that it could only be determined by refer- ence to objects many millions of miles distant from Australia — namely, the sun and the stars. The 141st meridian east of Greenwich was ordered by Parliament to be the boundary between the colonies in question. Most people are aware that the meridians are purely imaginary. They are not marked out on the face of the earth as they appear on the maps, and their position has therefore to be determined by astronomical observations. The survc\-ors set to work, and laid down the scientific frontier to the best of their abilit)- ; but it has been latel}' discovered that they made an error of several miles, and that the 141st meridian prescribed b}' Parliament lies wide of the border as defined by them. There is, in fact, a belt of Xo Alan's Land between Victoria and South Australia. This district is now in a state of suspension, 1 66 The Modern Odyssey. and the inhabitants have before them the chance of finding themselves suddenly handed over to another colony and of coming under the jurisdiction of another code of laws. In questions of taxation and of land tenure serious inconvenience would be caused. The matter has not yet been settled ; and the Privy Council, which is the tribunal appointed to unravel the tangled skein of colonial legislation, has been petitioned to decide it. South Australia — or, as it should be styled, Mid- Australia — though almost the largest in area, is the least progressive of the Australian colonies. It has many natural advantages — such as a central position and an extent of coast-line indented with harbours and havens both on the southern and the northern shore. In some ways it has been the most enterprising of the colonies. It constructed a line of telegraph from Port Darwin across the continent, thereby putting Australia in com- munication with the rest of the world, and a railway to connect the northern territory with Adelaide is in pro- gress. South Australia, however, is not prosperous. It is an unwieldy giant with feeble circulation, and lags behind in the race. It is burdened with unproductive and inaccessible territory. The tropical province is practically as far removed from the capital as the West Indies are from London, and the central portion is un- explored. A wilderness which, even when traversed in an express train, seems interminable, and in which nothing is seen save low shrubs of uniform height, intervenes between the border and the Murray. The river flows with a gentle, placid stream ; and though it has received the tribute of the Darling, the Lachlan, the Murrumbidgee, and many smaller affluents rising in the western slopes of the Australian Alps and the Blue Mountains, it is so On the Shore of the Southern Ocean. 167 parched by the sun and so dwindled in its course that it is comparatively small when it reaches the sea, and its mouth is so encumbered with alluvial deposits that only vessels of moderate tonnage can enter it. It pro- duces an excellent fish, called the Murray cod, which is in request at the Melbourne clubs. The line crosses the Murray, and enters the hilly dis- trict lying between the river and the Gulf of St. Vincent. The low, rolling eminences are covered with green scrub, but wherever the ground has been cleared for tillage the soil shows red and rich. An aromatic scent fills the air, and wild flowers are abundant, especially a kind of yellow daisy called the Cape Weed, which was accidentally im- ported from South Africa, and which, though it gives a gay appearance to the country in spring, is a great im- pediment to agriculture, as it cannot be exterminated and stock will not eat it. The train emerges from the Mount Lofty range, which is not so high as its name implies, and slowly descends to Adelaide. The view from the mouth of the tunnel over the yellow plain is altogether pleasing. The shining hamlets are dotted here and there upon the shore, and Adelaide stands in the midst of the sunny fields, which have a calm blue sea at rest by their side. The streets of Adelaide were laid out by compass, and run in the direction of the cardinal points. Not a very large amount of business or traffic is carried on in them ; and though the city is well built of stone and contains some handsome edifices, it wears the air of a lady in reduced circumstances. Government House is surrounded b}- a wall, which gives it the appearance of a prison, and enriches the collection of colonial official mansions with a unicjue specimen. Hard]}' a sound is heard in the streets at night. A motherly caution to cabmen and others, " Walk over crossing — walk round 1 68 The Modern Odyssfy. corner," is affixed to the telegraph-poles and lamp-posts. A belt of park-lands, laid out in gardens and boule- vards, encircles the city, and the little river Torrens, to which the inhabitants have given the honorary title of lake, runs through it. Adelaide is not a very lively place, and it is exces- sively hot in summer, but all who have an opportunity to do so .should visit it. The majority of persons reach Australia from the west, and, as all the mail steamers stay a few hours off Port Adelaide, a hurried expedition is usually made to the capital of South Australia, which has thus the privilege of supplying the traveller with his first impressions of Australia. In reality, however, it is by no means a typical Australian city, and it differs as widely from Melbourne as Edinburgh differs from Lon- don. It is only a quiet place in a very sunny plain, and though not wealthy, it seems to be tolerably contented with its lot, cherishing, perhaps, at the same time a secret hope, rather than an expectation, that the river of pro- sperity may flow some day in its direction. Its resem- blance to P^lorence is not apparent. The journey from the capital of Victoria to the capi- tal of New South Wales, from the Yarra to the Para- matta, can now be made by rail. The Sydney express, leaving ^lelbourne in the afternoon, traverses the first sixty miles without stopping, and is probably the only train south of the equator which regularly performs such a feat. The line passes out of the city into a district of meadows and fields, which need but a {^^^ hedges to give them an old-world appearance, and gradually rises through partially cleared forests of gums and wattles to the Dividing Range. At Seymour, where the first halt is made, a rapid gorge — after the manner of Swindon — ma}' be effected. Another hour brings the train into the On the Shore of the Southern Ocean. 169 district infested, not many years ago, by the hero of the larrikins of Melbourne, the bushranger Kelly ; and here the line is the boundary between two counties, which is probably a unique example of a railway being utilised for geographical purposes. A place bearing the poetical name of Violet Town is not of sufficient importance to delay the express, which, after lingering at Wodonga, the border town of Victoria, crosses the Murray into New South Wales, and reaches Albury an hour before midnight. Albury is a quiet little town in a favourable situa- tion, which will probably lead to its being selected as the Federal city of the gradually forming Australian Con- federation, and the vineyards on the neighbouring hill- sides may some day make the Albury vintages as well known as the wines of Bordeaux or Xerez. Another circumstance gives Albury a certain advantage which it would not otherwise possess. The absence of reasonable co-operation on the part of the colonies has resulted in the Victorian railways being built to the Irish gauge of 5 feet 3 inches, while New South Wales adopted the English gauge of 4 feet 8^ inches. The running of through trains between the two systems is thereby ren- dered impossible, and all passengers are obliged to change carriages at Albury, and some are induced by the enforced break in the journey to spend a few hours, or, it may be, a night or two, in the town, From Albury a journey of twelve hours, through a country covered for the most part with gum-forests, and watered here and there by a river fringed with willows, brings the train to the banks of the Paramatta. New South Wales is very thinly populated, and when, in the early morning, the mist U'ing upon the surface hides the few cultivated fields near the line, the forest and the hills in the distance which alone are seen show Australia in I/O The Modern Odyssey. its pristine state of solitude. A virgin land, even though it may not possess much scenic beauty, is always at- tractive. Nature's gardens, lawns, and tilth can seldom be improved, and the birds and four-footed creatures to whom she entrusts them are very careful of their charge. A land journey from Adelaide to Sydney by way of Melbourne will reveal the fact that, in the equipment of her railways, Australia is distinctly in advance of America. The more far-seeing, if more expensive, policy of pro- viding even the pioneer lines with all the latest appli- ances and improvements has been adopted. The permanent way is more carefully laid ; the country stations are neat and convenient buildings ; the safety of trains travelling on single lines is ensured by the use of the staff, and is not dependent on the memory of a train-despatcher ; and the interlocking of points and signals, which is exceptional in America, is usual in Australia. The superiority of the Australian railways is due to the circumstance that they were constructed by the Colonial Governments, and not by private companies whose interest it was, in the absence of competition, to provide the cheapest possible line. Free passes are given with much liberality to visitors, and as of right to all British ofificers above the rank of subaltern, and even to a subaltern who has any claim to the hospitality of a British colony, such as a wound in Burmah which has necessitated his being sent on sick leave to Australia. In the minor detail of refreshments, the Victorian railways set an example to all other railways. There are not many places, and certainly no railway stations, either in Europe or America, where passengers can ob- tain a meal of soup or fish, hot joint with potatoes and other vegetables, bread, butter, cheese, and marmalade, salad and pickles, and tea or coffee, for cightccnpcnce ; ^^i^-*" ^ On the Shore of the Southern Ocean. 171 or a beefsteak, with bread, butter, and cheese, and half a pint of colonial wine, for a shilling. Australia, if a less interesting country than America, is certainly a more comfortable. The din, bustle, and worry peculiar to the New World are absent. America is a machine in perpetual motion, on insufficiently lubricated bearings. Everyone is panting in the race for power or wealth. Life in the United States is repre- sented by an express train rushing wildly over an uneven country : life at the Antipodes by the measured pro- gress of a well-laden ship over a tranquil ocean. An air of steady and sober prosperity pervades an Austra- lian city. It is well-built, well-governed, and pleasing, if not always handsome, in appearance. The Melbourne streets are not disfigured by bad pavements, ragged telegraph and telephone wires, and an indiscriminate dis- play of advertisements ; and the side-walks are as good as could be desired. More attention is paid to the com- fort of the community than to the interests of indivi- duals ; and the neat, orderly appearance of a large Aus- tralian city, when compared with the haphazard, helter- skelter agglomeration of buildings — mean, moderate, and splendid — intersected by ill-conditioned thorough- fares, which constitutes a city in the United States, at once strikes a traveller recently arrived from the other side of the Pacific. ^ CHAPTER XII. AN AUSTRALIAN VANITY FAIR. A LITTLE more than a century ago, eleven ships sailed from England in company for the coast which Cook had discovered in the previous decade, and to which, from its fancied resemblance to the Welsh coast, he had given the name of New South Wales. Three store-ships and six convict-ships were convoyed by the frigate Siriiis and her tender to a continent which was then as little known as the Antarctic continent is at the present day. The idea seems to have been that, so long as the convicts were removed from Great Britain, it did not much matter what happened to them. The possibility of their be- coming the founders of a new colonial Empire which would replace the recently lost American continent was never entertained. A tedious voyage of eight months was broken at Rio de Janeiro and the Cape of Good Hope, and at length the dismal flotilla cast anchor in the haven to which Sir Joseph Banks, the naturalist of Cook's expedition, had given the name of Botany Ba\'. It was found to be unfitted to be even a convict station, as the supply of fresh water was insufficient, and the low land near the shore was not adapted for settlement. The naval officer in command thereupon set out in an open boat to search the coast for a more convenient h iven, and soon found an inlet a {tiw miles to the north which Cook had over- An Australian Vanity Fair. 173 looked, but which proved to be, next to Rio, the finest harbour in the world. The ships were transferred with- out delay, the convicts were landed, and the colony was established with due formality upon the banks of a little stream. When the King's proclamation had been recited and the British flag hoisted, Captain Phillip set to work, like Romulus, to build a city. The cockatoo and the wallaby were startled by the sound of the woodman's axe, and the aborigines stared at the strange white men passing to and fro upon the shore. The first Government House of the colony was a tent pitched by the side of a rivulet which has long since disappeared, near the spot where now Spring Street joins Pitt Street. The position of the bridge by which it was crossed is indicated by Bridge Street. A garden was planted close by with flowers from home and trees from Brazil and South Africa, but these also have vanished. A succession of misfortunes beset the young colony. The soil in the neighbourhood of the harbour was found to be incapable of growing corn. An experimental farm was therefore laid out a few miles higher up the river at Rosehill, now called Paramatta, but its produce was scarcely sufficient to sow another crop, and Sydney was more than once within measurable distance of extinction by starvation. The colony \vas dependent upon sea- borne supplies, which often failed to arrive ; scurvy broke out, and the food stock ran so low that every man, from the Governor to the convict, was put upon an allowance of flour, pork, and peas — all of which had been some years in store. The state of the settlement was at one time so critical that, in order to relieve the pressure, two hundred of the convicts were sent to Nor- folk Island, which had been reported to be fertile. The Sirius was lost, and news came that a provision ship 1/4 The Modern Odyssey. laden with two years* stores had been abandoned at sea. The tender was despatched to Java, but six months must elapse before she could return, and during her absence the danger of perishing by hunger con- tinued to threaten the colony. Never did a city start in life so inauspiciously. A thousand convicts were carelessly marooned upon a barren shore, there left to their fate, and only pre- served from destruction by the energy and prudence of Captain Phillip, to whom more than to any other indi- vidual Great Britain owes her Australian colonies. If an enterprise conducted under such unfortunate circum- stances, and so long involved in difficulties, had been allowed to fail, the colonisation of Australia would not have been effected by England for many years, or would have been effected by another nation. When, however, a settlement, which had had to fight its way against all kinds of enemies, was observed to emerge from the con- flict and to begin to live and thrive, the fitness of Aus- tralia to receive the surplus population of the mother country was recognised, and success was assured. No one who looks at the brilliant city which has spread itself over the bays and inlets of Port Jackson would imagine that once its only denizens were half- starved felons, or that there could have been a time when people were glad to leave it for a small island in the Pacific five hundred miles distant from the nearest land. Like Byron's daughter, Sydney " was born in bitterness And nurtured in convulsion." If, in the year 1788, any person had hazarded the opinion that the hungry plantation of Port Jackson — inhabited by prisoners at large, whose food was drawn precariously from a distance of many thousand miles An Australian Vanity Fair. 175 — would in a century have become a numerous, comfort- able, respectable, and peaceable community, he would have been ridiculed as a fanatical optimist. A comparison of the Sydney of 1788 with the Sydney of 1888 is the best proof that could be given of the colonising genius of the British race. It is certain that no other nation — ex- cept, perhaps, the Chinese — could have done as much with such raw and stubborn materials. Sydney lies upon a portion of the shores of the har- bour formed by the meeting of the Paramatta and the Pacific ; and, though built without the slightest regard to architectural effect, the city has a certain haphazard beauty of its own, derived mainly from its situation on the bays and promontories of the haven. The first im- pression of a stranger is one of disappointment. The buildings, when viewed from the water, are common- place, and no very prominent feature except the tower of the Post Office rises above the roofs. But the early discontent at the failure of an imaginary ideal is often followed by a juster view of things ; for, whether Sydney be judged by the standard of an American city of a few generations' growth, or of an English city of equal size, the verdict should not be unfavourable. The worst that can be said of Sydney is that the advantages of its superb situation have not }-et been fully utilised. It would be unreasonable to expect too much in a place hardly a hundred years old ; but, unfortunately, the capital of New South Wales has been advertised as the professional beauty of the cities of the world. It is not, however, hypercritical to remark that, although the indentations of the shore-line on either side of the harbour give a frontage many miles in length, no part of it has been converted into a broad road similar to the Cliiaja at Naples or to the 176 The Modern Odyssey. promenades of the towns of the Riviera, and that none of the public edifices are placed where they could be seen to advantage by the water's edge or on the rising ground above it. In Farm Cove the land near the shore has, it is true, been reserved as a botanic garden, with a sea-wall for foot-passengers and Sunday loungers, but the bay is small, and makes little difference in the appear- ance of the city from the opposite side of the harbour. There are no noble structures separated from the water by spacious quays planted with handsome trees. A broad parade or terrace, running along the shore of one of the larger bays, would have greatly embellished Sydney ; for the natural attractiveness of the harbour is at present expended in neutralising the less attractive aspect of the city. Some considerable portion of the foreshore must no doubt be given up to commerce — wharves, quays, warehouses, landing-stages, and their appurtenances are unavoidable in every seaport ; but these occupy a comparatively small portion of the strand. The rest has, for the most part, been " jumped " by private individuals for their own purposes, and the formation of a grand marine boulevard has been ren- dered impracticable. Money has been lavishly spent in public buildings, which are not invariably ornamental, and expense would not have stood in the way of the proposed boulevard, which would have made Sydney one of the most beautiful cities in the world. It is not even now too late. The north shore has not yet been covered very thickly with houses, and the greater part of it remains in its natural state, livery year, however, brings fresh encroachments, and it is hopeless to expect that, within a mile of a populous place. Nature will be long left alone. Commerce has not yet invaded the quiet bays and slopes in force, and there is still an opportunity of adorning some portion of An Austral/ an Vanity I- air. 177 the shore. Perhaps a colonial Baron Ilaussmann will some day be allowed to take, if not the city, at least the north siiore in hand ; and if he is a person of taste and judgment, Sydney would be able to call herself in truth the Venice or the Genoa of the Pacific. If some of the public buildings and larger private houses — as, for example, the University and the two Cathedrals, and the mansions of Darling Point and Double Bay — could be reproduced across the water on the hill overlooking Neutral Bay, and if the shore were lined with massive stone quays from which flights of marble steps led down to the water's edge, the effect would be superb. Government House, with its grounds and gardens, occupies a good position on the headland separating P'arm Cove — the anchorage of the Australian Squadron — from Circular Quay, where the ocean mail steamers are berthed. It is not a striking building, being a some- what grotesque example of Tudor Gothic of modem design, surmounted by several lank turrets. If the scheme to utilise the promontory as the site of a central railway station is ever carried into effect, Sydnc}- will not lose much by the demolition of the mansion, although the conversion of the site to the uses of a terminus, with all its accessories, would certainly render the future em- bellishment of the city still more difficult. Yet, if out- wardly Government House is not attractive, c\ery traveller who has received the hospitalit}' of a popular and genial Governor and of his beautiful wife looks back to it with gratitude and pleasure. There is not a mc^'c delightful form of social amuse- ment than a ball at Go\-ernment House during the Spring Races. Those people whose object in going to a ball is to see as much as possible of many persons will derive no less satisfaction than the more numerous class who go in order to see as much as possible of one person. M 178 The Modern Odyssey. If the rooms are crowded, the terraces and gardens sloping down to the water's edge are ideal shrines for doing poojah to the moon, or for that solitude a deux which is so delightful while it lasts, but which is often so productive of mischievous results. If it is excusable anywhere to sit out a round dance, it is so in Sydney. Under the serene Australian sky the calm haven reflects every star in the heavens ; the moonlight softens all the distance, and the outline of the north shore is just discern- ible across the haven ; dimly through the silvery haze that rests upon the water, the phantom of a ship is seen gliding down to the sea ; and in a little while the diverging waves from her prow are heard whispering upon the shore. All that is commonplace or unlovely is hidden from sight. A fairy mist floats across from some region where Nature weaves her most delicate tissues, and almost obliterates the images of the men-of-war at anchor in the Cove, but the network of cordage is still visible upon the face of the haze, which the moon has made luminous. The city is at rest ; no sound breaks into the stillness but the plash of the fountain, a whisper under the trees, and the strains of the music ; the scent of tropical flowers is exhaled into the air, and the paths are paved with silver by the moonlight, which prints the shapes of luxuriant foliage in ebony on the ground. The streets of Sydney are, in general, irregularly built and unattractive in appearance, and many are scarcely better than the alleys which may be found in the busy parts of Liverpool or Manchester. The com- mercial houses and the public buildings, some of which would command attention in a European city, suffer greatly from their surroundings. This is especially noticeable in the case of the Post Ofiicc, an edifice which cannot be seen to advantage, as its base is squeezed in An Australian Van/ty Fair. 179 the grasp of narrow streets. The Town Mall, however, stands in a street of good width, close to the Anghcan Cathedral, which, though the tendency of the ornamenta- tion of AustraHan public buildings errs in the direction of excessive elaboration of detail, has the opposite defect of a too flat and plain exterior. The Post Office is sur- mounted with a colossal figure of Britannia, seated on a lion and armed with a trident, and the spandrels of one front arc adorned with extraordinary allegorical figures representing Commerce, Science, Art, and Literature. The carvings have been so mercilessly criticised that the colony is now ashamed of them and has sanctioned their removal. There is no street in Sydney equal in appearance to Collins Street, or even to Bourke Street, in Melbourne. The central portion of Macquarrie Street is the most attractive spot within the city. One side is occupied by some of the Government offices and by moderate-sized and well-designed private mansions, and on the other lie the grounds of Government House and a public park. The street runs along the ridge of a hill, and the view, though not very extensive, is pleasing. Near the southern end stands a low, plain, unprepossessing structure. It was intended to be a hospital, but was never used for that purpose. The physical health of the colony being too good to need its services, its original purpose was slightly changed. It was converted into an asylum for male persons suffering from various forms of political distem- per, and is now occupied by the Legislative Chambers of New South Wales. Every large city uses a method of locomotion peculiar to itself London has its hansoms, Venice its gondolas, New York its elevated raihva\s and its cabs, in which persons can be jolted over the worst pavements in the world at a cost ne\cr less than a dollar a mile. The -M 2 i8o The Modern Odyssey. donkey of Cairo is favourably remembered by travellers in Egypt ; and the coolie who draws the jinricksha in Yokohama and Shanghai is perhaps the most satisfactory draught animal in civilisation. Each of these systems is preferable to the method adopted in Sydney. Though the streets of the city are narrow, they have been en- cumbered with lines of steam tramway, which is, in fact, an unfenccd railway running on the level in the thick of the foot and carriage traffic. The frequency of accidents has caused it to be styled the "Sydney Juggernaut." The cars and engines are clumsy and unsightly; the trains travel at a reckless speed, and scarcely differ, except in length, from a train on a railway, which, even in the least thickly populated districts of a country, is usually enclosed. In an older civilisation the Sydney Juggernaut would have been prohibited. But Sydney, if not so progressive as other Australian cities, is more original. The cars career almost at random through the city, and the intersections of the main streets are used as junctions, where, in addition to the ordinary vehicular traffic, three or four trains may sometimes be seen converging at the same time. A constant stream flows past the chief crossings, swings round the corners, obstructs business, frightens strange horses, and now and then kills a child. At the terminus in Bridge Street the shunting and marshalling of the cars is conducted in the roadway itself, under the windows of the Colonial Secretary's Office. The trains are less convenient than tramcars, as they only stop at certain poiDts. Tickets must be purchased beforehand, as an extra charge is made if the fare is paid in money on the car ; and as each ticket is only available for a certain distance, every section in- volves a fresh collection. If the number of houses set apart for the exercise of An Australian Vanity Fair. i8i any particular trade or profession is a test by which its prosperity may be measured, then the calHng of a banker is the most profitable occupation in Sydney. A new and remunerative reading of the proud motto Advance Australia has been introduced. Every facility is given for obtaining advances. There are as many banks in Sydney, where there is no extraordinary concentration of trade, as in Liverpool with nearly treble the popu- lation. The disparity may be accounted for by the greater value of money incidental to the circumstances of a new country, and by the large sums which are continually passing from hand to hand — not so much in course of trade as in mining, pastoral, and other speculations. A similar test applied to the smaller streets of the suburbs leads to the very remarkable inference that their staple industry is the disposal of the dead. Undertakers' shops are almost as numerous as public- houses in England, and would lead a stranger to suppose that Sydney was an unhealthy city. Yet the climate is favourable to vitality ; the death-rate is low, and an unusual proportion of the inhabitants arc either young or in the prime of life. It is difficult to reconcile these facts, except on the supposition that much money is wasted on unnecessary funeral pomp and display. Sonic of the ordinar)' siglits of Sydne\' are unfamiliar to Englishmen. The person in a white helmet and a red tunic hurrying along the streets is not a soldier but a postman. The boys cantering through the streets are telegraph messengers. Many hansoms arc seen, but no four-wheeled cabs. The sidewalks are usually roofed in on the sunn\- side — that is, on the side which faces the north. The telegraph wires are not reticulated abo\"C the houses, but carrietl, as the\" should be in ever\- well- regulated cit}-, on posts rising out of the kerbstone. 1 82 The Modern Odyssey. In addition to the official information— which is usually all that is to be found in a post-office at home — the latest shipping intelligence, as well as full reports of the weather over the whole of Australasia, are displayed in the General Post Office at Sydney, where also proof is given of the importance with which such an incident as the arrival of the European mails is regarded in the life of the colony. The lofty tower, which commands the greater part of the suburbs and the harbour, is utilised for signalling the movements of the mail steamers; and the approach of the Ormuz, the Victoria, or the Occanicn to King George's Sound or to Adelaide is forthwith notified from the flagstaff to the expectant city. The absence of electric lights in the streets, and of lifts in the houses, will be noticed by any traveller w^ho has been in America. The absence of the latter is re- markable, for Sydney is not a city in which people are accustomed to take unnecessary trouble. The lethargy induced by a hot climate is already beginning to affect it, and the inhabitants show signs of languor — at least, in matters of business. The push and bustle which precede and ensure success are absent. It is not that decay has set in, but rather that the exuberant vitality and restless energy which should characterise a young and hitherto prosperous community are not apparent. The streets are not crowded with men rushing to and fro in pursuit of wealth, and even on the noble Circular Quay an air of listlessness sometimes prevails. The business habits of the place are inactive and irregular, and retard its natural development. If a stranger enters a shop and cannot find the article he rcqviircs, no attempt is made to divert his wishes into another channel and to persuade him to buy that which he does not want, an omission which, though very An Australian Vanity Fair. 183 advantageous to himself, is not likely to develop trade ; and he is allowed to depart with a crestfallen feeling that his desires were too ignorant and too untimely to be gratified, and that he was an unfit person to be trusted to make a purchase. If he wishes to see the principal or the partner of a firm, the chances are that he will not be able to do so in the way of business. Their existence and their move- ments are hidden by their subordinates in a mysterious halo. The head partner has gone to the Blue Mountains, or is yachting in the harbour. The junior partner has gone to the Hawkesbury, or China, or Greenland, or the Kermedec Islands, or somewhere, as usual towards the end of the week, and the date of his return is quite uncertain. He usually returns on Monday or Tuesday, occasionally not until Wednesday or Thursday, but there is little doubt that he will be in the office on Friday. No, it is doubtful whether a telegram would reach him, but there would be no harm in trying ; though he makes it a rule never to attend to business matters when away from Sydney. It is not hard to account for the fact that Melbourne is gradually be- coming the commercial metropolis of Australia. The native pedantr}- of the German showed itself in the man of blood and iron when Prince Bismarck an- nounced his disco\-ery that sex applies to nations as well as to indixiduals. The cities of the world may be similarly classified. Melbourne belongs, without doubt, to the male category. It is masculine in temperament, habits, appearance, demeanour, and wa)' of thinking, and it would be emblematically represented by the figure of a )'oung and prosperous tradesman in a large wa}- of business. Sj'dney, on the other hand, is a woman ; and in her \-ounger da)-s she was a very naughty child. All her characteristics are feminine. She is pla}-ful, ga\-, 184 The Modern Odyssey, sprightly, and inexact. She frolics in the sunshine, while Melbourne is hard at work exporting wool. She takes off her shoes and stockings, and paddles in the waves of the Pacific, and makes a face at her staid male cousin in Victoria. She is not quite beautiful, nor altogether an ornament to the haven of which she has taken possession, but she is a nice-looking and an exceedingly pleasant and volatile young person. She is more companionable but less trustworthy than Melbourne. She poses as the spoilt child of the Southern Ocean, and a trifle offends her, and a trifle appeases. A casual word of praise bestowed upon Melbourne makes her sulk for a month. Sydney, regarded as the playground, as the Vanity Fair of Australia, is without a rival. Social life is in some places a comedy, in others a burlesque, in others almost a melodrama. In Sydney it is an operetta. The merry and light-hearted players frolic upon the sunny stage: a stranger joins the troupe, and is quickly allowed to feel as though he had belonged to it for years. British stiffness seems unable to exist south of the Equator. Nothing can exceed the cordiality with \\hich a stranger is welcomed. It is not the welcome proceeding from a desire to satisfy curiosity, for Australia has emerged from that primitive state in which every strange animal or object from a distant land is regarded as a thing to be stared at, but it is the welcome which comes from kindness of heart. A community in which there are no very great distinctions of rank, and in which wealth, if not very evenly distributed, at least cannot be spent very lavishly — the simplicity of the establishments and of the mode of living of some of the wealthiest people in Sv'dncy is remarkable — is favourably placed for the cultivation of society, or friendly intercourse in its best form. A genial climate, congenial tastes on the part of An Australian Vanity Fair. 185 the people, a suitable neighbourhood, and the absence of very engrossing occupations, have made picnicking the favourite form of daytime amusement in Sydney. A Sydney picnic does not wear the school-treat and bank-holiday air which distinguishes the English picnic. It is not an aggregation of individuals bent on consum- ing food under unusual conditions in the open air. It is a pastoral play. The banks of the Paramatta and the bays and inlets of " our beautiful harbour " offer ex- cellent stages for the performance. Sometimes the hill overlooking the Pacific at Manley Beach is selected ; sometimes a bosky retreat among the gum-trees of Middle Harbour. The performers are carefully selected by the acting- manager, with due regard to mutual affinities and preferences, and also to the just balance of the sexes ; and when the pleasant lever du ridean — a voyage to the chosen spot in a steam launch across the calm haven sparkling in the sun — is over, the per- formance begins in earnest. The banquet is served, and the first scene having been enacted without a hitch, the company break off in pairs, like the animals of the Ark. It is natural that very many foolish things should be said and done upon such an occasion, but there seems to be a sort of tacit understanding that the character of a Masque shall be maintained tliroughoiit. It must not, however, be supposed that picnics hold a monopoly for sui)pl\'ing the people of Sydnc}' with amusement. Australian women are general!}' active, graceful, and well dressed, and show to adxantage when in motion ; and dancing, lawn tennis, and rink skating therefore stand high in poi)ular estimation. If e\"er the latter deserves to be called poetr\- on wheels, it is in Sydne\-, at a private skating part\- in the Rcdfcrn Ex- hibition Building. At balls ever\- one dances — even the old women. No ball-rcjom is encumbered with a LranLT 1 86 The Modern Odyssey. of useless young men who hang about the doors and refuse to be comforted ; and professional sitters-out, whether male or female, are not numerous. The abun- dance of flowers makes the work of decoration easy, and one of the most charming sights in the social world is a crowded ball-room in the Australian Vanity Fair. It seems probable that in the course of the next few generations Melbourne wnll absorb most of the trade of Australia, and that Sydney will become the resort of the unemployed of the upper classes, and more than ever the city of pleasure : perhaps, even, Sydney fashions will be quoted in Australia as the fashions of Paris are quoted in Europe and America. There may, however, be a worthier destiny in store for her, and it is one that is within her grasp. Letters, science, and art must have their metropolis, no less than commerce. Let Sydney cheerfully acknowledge the commercial supremacy of Melbourne, and, having ceased to be so foolishly en- vious of it, endeavour to win for herself such a position in Australia as Boston holds in America, that the middle or end of the twentieth century may find Sydney renowned, not merely as at present for her beautiful har- bour, but as a community whose opinions are listened to with respect and attention, and as the intellectual metro- polis of the southern hemisphere. The spirit of opposition and depreciation is so deeply engrained in human nature, that if there were in the world a spot of ideal and perfect beauty it would be im- politic to praise it as it deserved. Men derive satisfac- tion from the egotistic consciousness that they are able to rise superior to the ignorant enthusiasms of their neighbours. The first person who discovered that there were spcjts on the sun was probably delighted with the /?-V Austral/an Vanity Fair. 187 imperfection which had escaped the eyes of many gene- rations. Extravagant laudation has impaired the repu- tation of many admirable things, and the pleasure of gazing at a beautiful scene is often discounted by highly coloured descriptions of it. It is so in the case of " our beautiful harbour," as the people of Sydney proudly and affectionately desig- nate their haven. The haven is an arm of the Pacific merging into the firth of the Paramatta, and the shore line is more than a hundred and fifty miles in length. On each side bays, inlets, and minor havens encroach upon the land, which, where it has not been cleared for building purposes, is covered with gum-trees. Many of the bays are lovely retreats, but they have a family like- ness to each other, and there is little variety and gran- deur in the picture. The dark foliage is too violent a contrast to the gleaming city, and the lack of inter- mediate tones is tiring to the eye. It is a scene composed of charming details. The solitary strands of the seques- tered inlets, with the woods coming down to the water's edge, are ideal places of repose in a sunny clime ; the strips of ocean burrowing into the land, and appearing and re-appearing on all sides, are pleasant to the eye ; but, nevertheless, the general effect is not very beautiful or impressive. S\'dncy Harbour was designed b\- Xature in a pre- Raphaelite mood ; and, when ever\' allowance has been made for the invincible reluctance of individuals to acknowledge the correctness of public opinion, its attrac- tions do appear to have been examined by the partial Australian through a microscope. Xot that it is not beautiful in its way, but it is hardly so enchanting as the strangers who know it only b\- repute are led to believe. In Ik^tany l^ay — a loch coinnumicating with the sea a few miles south of the entrance to S\"dnc}' Harbour — 1 88 The Modern Odyssey. the first chapter of AustraHan history was written. Two monuments record the successful acquisition of the country by one Empire and the failure of another to make a settlement in it. A brass tablet marks the spot where Captain Cook landed, and a column on the oppo- site promontory stands to the memory of Captain de la Perouse, who arrived on the coast with the intention of annexing it to the kingdom of France, only to find that the commander of the Endeavour had forestalled him. To him was allotted a double measure of misfortune ; for he not only followed blindly in the trail of Cook, but soon after leaving Botany Bay he perished, with all his men, upon the Barrier Reef. The Australian rivers which flow into the Pacific are insignificant, but the scenery on their banks is generally pleasing, and often beautiful. The shores of the Para- matta, for a distance of several miles above Sydney, are the most attractive part of the harbour. The northern bank of the river is not so much indented with bays as the southern ; the inlets are wider, and do not run very deeply into the land; thus the expanse of water in view is broader. The islands and headlands near the city are covered with docks, engineering works, and factories, but higher up the natural beauty of the river is un- smirched. The Paramatta is a tranquil, bright stream, var)ing greatly in width ; bends and reaches, merging gradually into one another, take the place of the compli- cated system of bays in the lower harbour, which is, in f.ict, no more than a group of prett}', paltry pools and channels, squeezed in between opposing promontories. If Sydney Harbour does not merit all the flattery that has been bestowed upon it, there are many spots in the short course of the Paramatta which are fit to be com- pared with any river scenery in the world. The appellations given to the localities of a new An Australian Vanity Fair. 189 country in modern times frequently originate in some circumstance or incident in the life of high officials which would otherwise be lost to history. Thus, when the stock ran short in Canada, Tiny and Floss, the favourite lapdogs of a Governor-General's wife, gave their names to two infant townships. This, so far as is known, is the lowest depth of frivolity from which the supply has ever been drawn, and it contrasts forcibly with Tasman's romantic choice of his own true love's patronymic of Van Dicmen as the word by which his discovery should be known to the world. On the banks of the Paramatta a day's adventures of an early Governor of the colony are chronicled. There is nothing exciting or extraordinary in them, and they are such as constantly occur in the lives of common men. The Governor had quarrelled with his wife — a foolish act in a colony where female society was not too plentiful. He left her in a huff at the town of Paramatta, and went to Sydney. Each disputant was in the right ; and as, under these circumstances, neither would make over- tures to the other, judicious friends arranged for a recon- ciliation half-way. The village of Concord and Kissing Point indicate the spot where the tiff was made up, while Breakfast Point and Dinner Creek record the less ro- mantic incidents of the auspicious occasion. With this historic case before its eyes, the Legislature of the colony has latcl}' passed an Act which makes divorce more easy in New South Wales than in any other part of the British Empire. It is as difficult for a modern traveller to tear himself away from Sidney in September as it was for Uh'sses to leave Circe's Isle of Aeaea. Eiven when there is an opportunit)- of visiting the Hawkesbury — a river which is said to combine all the most beautiful features of the Mississippi, the Rhine, the W }'c, and other famous 1 90 The Modern Odyssey. streams — the kindness and hospitality of the people of Sydney constantly cause the excursion to be postponed from day to day until the opportunity is lost. The only consolation available is that of the fox. Perhaps, as in the case of "our beautiful harbour," the beauty of the Hawkesbury may have been slightly exaggerated ; per- haps the rival of all the renowned rivers of Europe and America may have unduly englamoured the Aus- tralian eye. If some excuse may be found for the modern Ulysses who is induced by the Circean attractions of the Australian Vanity Fair to abandon his visit to the Hawkesbury, it is only on condition that he makes a stern resolution and registers a vow that nothing what- ever shall keep him away from the Blue Mountains — neither a lawn-tennis party at Admiralty House, nor a picnic down Middle Harbour, nor even the prospect of a ball at Darling Point and of a moonlight wander in the gardens with the beautiful A Z , what time that " Heaven and earth On some calm night are far too fair for mirth." If the rest of Australia were a wilderness, the Blue Mountains of New South Wales would be sufficient to allure a traveller from the most distant region of the globe. Yet even in Great Britain there are hills that would look down upon Mount Victoria and its fellows. The peculiar charm of the Australian range does not depend upon its elevation above the plain. There are no soaring, snow-clad peaks hidden in the clouds ; no deserted heights bare of vegetation ; no crags and preci- pices rising on the flank of a glacier. A landscape painter could make nothing of them. The Blue Moun- tains do not give much opportunity for feats of agility : Ay Australian Va.v/tv Fair. 191 an Alpine climber, and even a member of the Scotch Mountaineering Club, would despise them. Yet, for all that, they are the most fascinating moun- tains in the world. It is easy to point out their defects in those particulars which commonly give beauty to mountain scenery, and it is difficult to define exactly wherein their matchless charm consists. It may be the impression which they leave upon the mind rather than upon the eyes. It is subjective rather than objective. There is no extraordinary natural beauty to delight the sense of sight ; but the poetic, pathetic, melancholy love- liness of the scene enters the heart, and there abides. The very monotony of the prospect is weird and allur- ing. A forest of gum-trees covers the range, which is intersected by deep valleys filled with an exquisite blue haze, so fine in its tissues that it offers the slightest possible obstruction to the rays of light ; and this deli- cate hue of violet-grey, to which the Blue Mountains owe their name and their renown, is, next to the tint of a wave-crest on the Atlantic pierced b}' the beams of the setting sun, the most beautiful colour in Nature. A belt of alluvial land about forty miles in breadth intervenes between the coast and the Blue iNIountains, which long formed an insuperable obstacle to the explo- ration of the interior of the country. Now, however, the Great Western Railway has not only surmounted it, but has penetrated the continent to the banks of the Murray — a distance of more than five hundred miles in a direct line from S\-dney. The train traverses the level ground at an easy speed, and at Penrith crosses the River Nepean, which takes in its lower reaches the name of Hawkesbur}-; for rivers are scarce in Australia, and their number has been fictitiously increased by the simple device of giving different names to diftcrent sections of the same stream. 192 The Modern Odyssey. At Emu Plains, from which the emu has long since been expelled by the settler, the line reaches the zigzag by which the ascent is effected, and, as the train mounts from point to point, the plain is seen unrolling itself towards the ocean. The green fields bordering the calm and luminous Nepean, the villages and towns scattered over the champaign, the homesteads and farms under the hillside, appear as in a map; and when the train, often swinging to and fro like a shuttle in a loom, attains a level where the mountain-side becomes less steep, and allows the line to be carried directly towards the table-land, the view over the plain extends to the Pacific, faintly visible in the horizon ; and if there were no other means of obtaining a glimpse of the sunny, fertile land bordered by the ocean, the toil of climbing the mountain-side on foot would be amply repaid by the lovely scene which the gaps in the dark woods on the crest reveal. The Blue Mountains are a plateau rising abruptly from the coastal plain to an average height of about three thousand feet. None of the peaks are very much elevated above the platform, which has the appearance of a mountain range with the summits reduced to a nearly uniform level. But Nature, when she removed the excrescences, was careful not to fill up the de- pressions with them. The most remarkable feature of the range is the deep basins and hollows which have been scooped out of it. These can scarcely be called valleys, for there are few instances of a gently sloping bank leading down from the heights into the depths ; they are rather troughs and quarries, such as a nation (jf giants might have excavated in a hundred centuries. l*2vcry hollow is filled with the magical blue vapour which modifies the hue of each feature in the landscajjc, and which, though distinctly tinged with colour, is never- A a; Australian Vanity Fair. 193 theless so translucent that distant objects can be clearly seen through it. The soft, transparent haze comes up to the edges of the precipice, and approaches so close to the brim that it seems as if it could be ladled like water out of the bowls. Many of the valleys have never yet been profaned by the foot of man, and only the cockatoo and the wallaby know their recesses. Gum forests cover high ground and depression alike with a mantle of sombre green foliage, and bare grey trunks and dead trees here and there heighten the weird effect of the scene. Crags, cliffs, and precipices break suddenly into the plateau, and fence round the basins overflowing with the ethereal haze. Vistas of enclosed depressions, many miles in width, and carpeted with untrodden woods, appear from every eminence, and so great is the height from which they are viewed that the little hillocks at the bottom are hardly discernible. Pinnacles and towers of detached rock spring up from below, and terraces and platforms overhang abysses so deep and narrow that the sunlight never falls into them. The Blue Mountains remain almost in their primeval state, although a railway traverses them, and although a few small towns have sprung up beside it. A few spots — as, for example, the Jcnolan Cave, and a vast chasm called " Govett's Leap," from an uncertain legend — are much frequented, but by far the larger portion of the district has never been stared at by the prying eyes of the vulgar. Katoomba, the little town in the woods hard by the Lcura Falls, stands so high that the plain is visible beyond the forest foreground, and sometimes even the light of Sydney South Head can be seen sparkling faintly in the distance. The road to the Weatherboard or Wentworth Falls passes for a mile or two through the bush, and is lined with the ferns and the white-flowering N 194 The Modern Odyssey. shrubs which nestle under the gums, when it suddenly terminates at the edge of a profound valley fenced in by escarped rocks. At the head of the valley lies a narrow but very deep excavation, into which a little stream falls. After the slender rivulet has toppled over the brink, it soon loses its cohesion, and is dispersed into spray long before it reaches the bottom, twelve hundred feet below. A pebble can be dropped from the edge on to the forest in the abyss, but the highest trees attain scarcely to one-tenth of the height of the precipice at the base of which they stand ; and so thoroughly has the valley been fortified by nature that, although a stone tossed over the brink will be at its journey's end in a few seconds, a circuit of no less than sixteen miles must be compassed before the spot whereon it fell can be reached on foot. Another precipice, with a rugged face rising out of the floor, forms the opposite wall of the excavation, and beyond the gap hewn in the encircling cliffs is the main valley, thickly covered with forest. In the early morning the vast hollow is filled with snowy clouds, which, as the sun attains its power, are lifted out of the basin, and float away with the breeze, leaving behind them the violet haze. Deep-green and blue is the prevailing colour of the nearer objects, while the images of the more distant become gradually paler and paler as they recede into the backgrounci. The shadows of the hills and of the passing clouds throw darker patches upon the floors of the basins ; the sun- light brings out the purple and grey bloom of the gum leaves, and every delicate shade of blue, violet, and green is there. CHAPTER XIII. AUSTRALIAN DEMOCRACY AT WORK AND AT PLAY. I.— At Work. More than thirty years have elapsed since the founda- tion-stone of the Victorian Houses of Parhament was laid, yet the scaffolding is still erect, and it is likely to remain in position until the end of the century. For some reason, which may possibly be an instinctive feeling that parliamentary institutions are becoming effete, Victoria has shown a strange reluctance to com- plete the edifice. A similar idea seems to prevail in New South Wales. In Macquarrie Street, Sydne}-, stands a building of low elevation and commonplace appearance, which was built for a hospital, but which is now occupied by the Legislative Chambers of the colony. The estimation in which the elective branch of the Legislature — the Legislative Assembly — is held by the general public was lately shown by the groan of dismay uttered by the leading Sydney journal at the prospect of an increase in the members of it under the operation of the "India-Rubber" clauses of the Electoral Act, which provide for additional representa- tives in proportion to the increase of the population. P^ven in an Australian Legislature each member salutes the Speaker on entering the House, but the gesture admits of infinite variet}'. One member bows profoundly; another is content with a slight inclination N 2 196 The Modern Odyssey. or off-hand nod, and this is, in many cases, the extent of the courtesy extended to the Chair. The authority of the Speaker is rudely defied. A newly elected occupant of the Chair is greeted by a member who disputes his ruling with the remark that his predecessor did know something about the rules of parliamentary procedure ; and he may be doomed to regulate a debate upon his own conduct, in which he is compared to a gorilla, and which occupies no less than thirty-seven pages of double columns in the official report. When such in- vectives are hurled at the Chair, the incident of one member taunting another with having once cheated a barmaid out of threepence, or styling a former Premier an old counterfeit and a bandy-legged schemer, hardly attracts attention. Papers laid upon the table, and relating to a subject under discussion, are seized by a member, who refuses to surrender them. The Estimates beco.me a scramble for money. Each member is desirous of obtaining a grant to be spent in his constituency. He is not par- ticular about the nature of the gift. It may be a bridge or it may be a bridewell. Political influence, intensified by log-rolling, obtained for one small town the boon of a gaol, erected at a cost to the colony of ^50,000, as though " To show by one satiric touch No people needed it so much." The Member for that district must have had a high opinion of his supporters, but they accepted the equivocal favour with satisfaction. Neither do the constituencies appear to hold their deputies in very high honour. The latter are often regarded as general agents, resident in the colonial capital in order to attend to the various wants of the district, not only in political matters, but Australian Democracy at Work. 197 also in the trivial afiairs of everyday life. A constituent will commission a member to choose a buggy for himself, or a bonnet for his wife. As the representative is the sieve through which good things are strained before they can reach the represented, it is natural that a portion should remain in his hands. The M.L.A. stands out for h.\s poiirboire as resolutely as any Paris cabman. The Melbourne legislators have voted themselves free passes for life over the railways after seven years' service in the House. The Sydney legislators are agitating for franks for their electoral cor- respondence. An English Member of Parliament would say that any privilege likely to encourage a constituent's cacoetlies scribendi is greatly to be deprecated, and that, on the contrary, it would be better to adopt some means of stanching the flow of letters with which a public man is deluged. A whole day is wasted in discussing the question whether it is permissible for a Member to call a Judge an Old Woman. Now this, no doubt, raises a very deli- cate question. Many old women are estimable, sensible, clear-headed, and unprejudiced — in fact, possess the good qualities which should distinguish the wearer of the ermine. Why should it, therefore, be considered a term of disparagement when applied to a judge? and would it be right to throw a slur upon the sex by declaring that the holder of a judicial office is libelled by comparison with a presumably respectable female advanced in years? The animus of the Member was, however, manifest, and the Speaker was compelled to decide that the expression was disorderly ; but his ruling did not give satisfaction, and such a furious onslaught was made upon him that he was compelled to withdraw it, with the plea that he had overlooked the circumstance that the name of the judge in question was before the House in a Bill 198 The Modern Odyssey. constituting a new office, and that, therefore, the rule that the conduct of a judge could only be impugned by a formal motion for an address to the Crown praying for his removal did not apply. It was to be expected that the clumsy weapon of all- night sittings used in the British House of Commons would be seized with alacrity by the Australian obstruc- tives. On one occasion, during a recent session, the Legislative Assembly of Victoria met at the usual hour, and continued to sit during the night until after two o'clock on the following afternoon. All went smoothly up to midnight, when a difference of opinion between the Premier and a member of the Opposition as to whether certain estimates involved matters of contention ushered in the trouble. The Ministers were denounced as power- less shams, who, so long as they could get through with their estimates, cared little for the fate of their Bills. The fine old bludgeon of tic quoqiie was quickly brandished by the Premier, who retorted that, if any party was power- less, it was the Opposition, which numbered but eight in- dividuals. The gauntlet was thrown down, and the tournament began. An adjournment for supper was made at 2 a.m., and the repast and the respite invigor- ated the combatants for a renewal of hostilities. No pre- tence was made to confine the discussion to the estimates in question, and the debate hinged upon personal remin- iscences hurled from one side to another. The Minister referred to a pathetic incident in the political career of his opponent, who had once been moved to tears, and said with exultation, " I never cried on the floor of the House, anyway ! " A newspaper report thus describes the incident : — " He moved slowly up and down the Treasury licnch, with hands deep in his pockets, his head well tossed back, and, encouraged by the cheers of his supporters, Australian/ Democracy at Work'. icg threw red-hot shot into the enemy's ship," with the result that those supporters were soon afterwards styled a disreputable crew. The remark had to be withdrawn, although " other remarks, which cannot be published, were allowed to pass." At this moment some doubt as to the dignity of the proceedings seems to have arisen in the mind of a Member, and at his instance the Strangers' Galleries were closed for a short time. The House at 5 a.m., though exhausted, was quite good- humoured. On the front Opposition Bench was stretched the prone form of an obstructive sleeping profoundly, with openmouth,and drcaming,possibly,of thedays of his inno- cent childhood. In the corner another figure was huddled up, with knees bent, hands clenched under the chin, and the uppermost cheek surmounted by a tall hat, which a sudden draught dislodged and the sleeper awoke with a start. It was some time before he could realise his posi- tion ; but he soon re-composed himself, using a pocket- handkerchief as a nightcap and a newspaper as a rug. The ludicrous attitude of a Minister sitting bolt upright in his place, and nodding so violently that every moment Members expected to see his head roll off on to the floor, attracted so much attention that the debate was inter- rupted while some one went to the rescue. Soon after daylight appeared it was discovered that the obstructives numbered but seven. One unit had basely deserted his comrades, and had taken the earl}- train to Ballarat. Breakfast was served at 7 a.m., and the windows were opened. As fresh members entered they were greeted with jeers, and inquiries whether thc}' or the Go\'ernmcnt had paid for the cabs which had brought them up to thc House. The leader of the Oppo- sition made a discursive speech denouncing a stupendous piece of jobbery which he professed to have discovered in the Department of Mines ; but the effect of his 20O The Modern Odyssey. rhetoric was marred by the snores of a supporter of the Government, who, with great want of tact, had fallen asleep on an Opposition bench. Luncheon was the next episode in the proceedings, which soon afterwards ter- minated. A compromise was arranged, by which the Government obtained almost all for which they had origin- ally contended. By this time Members were in a better frame of mind. General apologies were tendered and accepted all round with great earnestness ; and the House, having passed a vote of thanks to the occupant of the Chair, adjourned after a sitting of more than twenty hours. The Legislature of Victoria, following the example of the British House of Commons on Derby Day, adjourns for the Melbourne Cup, and with such an example it is unreasonable to blame it ; the Legislature of Tas- mania goes further, and adjourns for the Masonic Ball at Hobart. IL—At Play. In the Parliament Houses at Melbourne and at Sydney the Australian Democracy may be seen at work ; on Flemington Racecourse, near Melbourne, it may be watched at play, and showing by its behaviour which occupation is more to its taste. There is probably no country in the world which offers to its inhabitants so many opportunities of amusing themselves as an Austra- lian colony. The population of Victoria slightly exceeds a million, spread over an area equal to England, Scot- land, and Wales, and there are more than three hundred race-meetings every year, of which nearly one- fifth are held in the immediate neighbourhood of the capital. The interest in cricket is rapidly declining, and racing has become the popular pastime of Australia. The people have adopted what was once styled " the sport of kings." Australian Democracy at Play. 201 When a new township is laid out, the proposed race- course is the chief feature in the plan. Though there is hardly a day without a race-meeting, fresh fixtures are being constantly added to the calendar. Many of the meetings are, no doubt, rough-and-ready scrambles at out-of-the-way stations up country, but the majority are properly organised, as in England, and they are held on racecourses which are second to none in the old country. The chief racing clubs are recognised by special Acts of the Colonial Legislatures, and have legal sanction for their proceedings. This privilege has not been abused. The absence of rowdyism, which usually infests an Eng- lish racecourse, is remarkable. The spectacle of a hundred thousand Anglo-Saxons enjoying themselves in a quiet and orderly manner can be seen only in Aus- tralia, where Democracy at Play gives a more favourable impression of the country than Democracy at Work. The Spring Meeting of the Victorian Racing Club is held towards the beginning of November on the racecourse at Flemington, less than three miles from the heart of the city of Melbourne. It lasts a week, and is the sporting carnival of Australasia, reaching its climax in the race for the Melbourne Cup. The vast majority of the population is either directly or in- directly interested in one or more of the five thousand racehorses of Australasia, and most of them either possess or make for themselves excuses for visiting Melbourne during the Cup week. Squatters from the banks of the Murray or the Murrumbidgee find that particular business, such as the necessity for examining some new device for the extirpation of rabbits, calls them to the colonial capital at the end of October ; architects and engineers come to inspect the latest buildings and factories ; miners from the hills where the 202 The Modern Odyssey. wild gold grows come to buy new crushing machinery; while ladies from up-country and the small towns dis- cover that they can no longer postpone a visit to a dentist or a dressmaker. It has likewise been noticed that the flagship of the Australian squadron is always found to be in such a condition in the spring that she must be docked at Williamstown during the meeting.' All roads in Europe lead to Rome ; all roads in Australia lead to Flemington. To not a few native Australians the Melbourne Spring Meeting affords the only opportunity they have of keeping themselves in touch with the civilised world, and of relieving the monotony of a lonely life in the bush ; and it therefore may be regarded not only as a means of amusement, but also as possessed of humanising influences. Its success is greatly due to this cause. It is more than a mere Carnival ; it is a Congress, a Diet of Anti- podean civilisation. Not less than ;i^i 50,000 were expended in reclaiming a marshy tract of ground near the Salt Water Creek, and in adapting it to the purposes of a racecourse, with the result that Flemington is as nearly perfect as the intelligent use of money can make it. A branch line of railway runs to a station immediately in rear of the Grand Stand ; and the exits from the platforms to the stands, the paddocks, and the hill are so arranged that, even when a train is arriving almost every minute, there is little crowding or hustling, though nearly fifty thousand people are deposited on the course within three hours. The journey from the Spencer Street terminus in Melbourne occupies only a few minutes, and the pas- sengers are discharged upon the finest racecourse in tlic world. On one side a hill rises above the course, of a sufficient height to overlook the Grand Stand. Two intcrscctin