XIV.
HOME AGAIN.
Thevoyage home from Australia is a less easy and pleasant one than the voyage out. Owing to the prevalence of strong westerly winds for the greater part of the year in the South Pacific and Southern Indian Ocean, homeward-bound ships almost invariably sail eastward round Cape Horn, though the distance that way is greater, instead of westwards by the Cape of Good Hope. In rounding Cape Horn they must go to at least 56° south, and these latitudes have a disagreeable reputation for heavy gales, fogs, icebergs, and intense cold. To get amongst the icebergs in a fog, and with half a gale of wind blowing, is a very serious business indeed; and in spite of the utmost precaution many good ships have had hairbreadth escapes in this part of the voyage. During January, February, and March, indeed, the westerly winds are not so regular—old Horsburgh noted this fact as much as fifty years ago—and a Melbourne ship now and then manages to get round Cape Leeuwin and to the Cape of Good Hope. And ships sailing from Adelaide, being already so far to the west, attemptthis course at all times of year, so that you may get a passage home by the Cape by sailing from hence. But it is a tedious voyage at best. A hundred days is a quicker voyage this way than eighty days by Cape Horn.
Then there is the way home by New Zealand and Panama, which takes about eight weeks from Melbourne. And, lastly, there are the Peninsular and Oriental Company’s mail-steamers, which are in correspondence with the Calcutta and China mail-steamers, which they meet at Galle; and this is the quickest, the most interesting, and, from October to April, the pleasantest way of going.
Punctually to the hour the anchor of the trim littleBombayis got up. A Peninsular and Oriental steamer scorns the contact, it seems, of almost any wharf but that of her own native Southampton, and waits with proper dignity in mid-harbour to take in her passengers not only at Melbourne, but even at Sydney, the starting-place of her voyage. So there is no shore-tackle to be loosed. In an instant the powerful screw is revolving, making the whole ship quiver and vibrate, the water in the glasses spirt up and spill, and the passengers at the saloon-table shake and nod over their luncheon as though they had the palsy. For the last time we pass through Port Phillip Heads, and steer straight across the Australian Bight.
One more glimpse of the new Southern world we have before striking straight across the Indian Ocean to the old Oriental one. At sunset about five daysafter leaving Melbourne the land is in sight again, and soon after the distant glimmer of the lighthouse which stands on a little rocky island at the mouth of King George’s Sound. In a few hours we enter the Sound, a large harbour or bay, land-locked except to the south and south-east, embraced by a confusion of long irregular promontories and islands between which the eye cannot distinguish, and bare of tree or house to disturb their undulating outline. So white they look in the moonlight, that they might be bare chalk hills, and even by daylight it is difficult to make out that it is only pure white sand which covers them. A few lights on shore ahead of us are the only sign of life. Even the pilot seems to be asleep, for we have to burn blue-lights and rockets to summon him as we steam on at half-speed. At last he comes on board, looking very sleepy; we enter the inner harbour, the anchor drops, and the twelve hours’ work of coaling is at once begun, and goes on continuously throughout the night.
Daylight reveals that in all the great natural harbour there is only one sea-going vessel, the Adelaide packet, which has come to meet us. There are still three or four hours left, and we land in one of the boats on the pretty sandy shore, and make our way through low scrub towards the settlement. The flowers are lovely, especially a large brilliant red bottle-brush, and a handsome white flower growing on a bush with slimy sticky leaves, which is the fatal poison-plant, or one of them, which has been so injurious to Western Australia, by poisoning the sheep and makingthe land valueless for grazing. As for Albany, the settlement, it is a pleasant, cosy little village of wooden houses, with three or four superior habitations for the Government officials and the Peninsular and Oriental agent; and considering that it is on a splendid harbour, and situated in the extreme corner of a great continent, it is about as quiet, dull, lifeless, and unprogressive a place as can well be conceived. For what is there to be done there? The climate is said to be particularly charming, but the soil is so poor and sandy that even the few hundred inhabitants can scarcely grow food for their own wants. There is an establishment of convicts here, and they are to be seen doing such work as can be found for them; and in one respect it is a good place for them, for there is little chance of their escaping. From the top of a hill we could see to a great distance inland, but there is scarcely a sign of habitation or even a large tree to be seen. The nearest station is fifty miles off, and Perth, the only considerable town, two hundred and fifty. The road to it is plainly visible for miles and miles, stretching straight across the plain. The native black-fellows frequent the place, and are to be seen more in their original condition here than in most other parts of Australia—repulsive-looking, dark-brown figures, their hair and bodies smeared with grease, boomerangs and spears in their hands, and opossum skins sewn together hung on them as on a clothes-horse, and making a poor apology for clothing.
It is hard to understand how the settlement contrivedto exist at all before the days when the Peninsular and Oriental steamers made it a coaling-station, and a place for meeting the Adelaide steamer. But it is an old settlement, as I was reminded in a very unexpected and startling way by an object that I should as soon have expected to see in Belgrave Square as there—a common parishStocks, in perfect repair!
But at noon theBombay’sgun booms over the dead silence of the sunny landscape, as a signal to go on board again, and we take our last look at Australia. In theBombayone seems to be already almost in India. The ship’s company are a medley of races from Europe, Asia, and Africa. The officers of course, and the quartermasters, and a few more, are English. But the great majority are black or bronze-coloured. The captain has a boat’s crew of nine fine sailor-like Malays, who cannot speak a word of English. Amongst the stewards in the saloon are two or three pure African negroes, and very good servants they are. The firemen and stokers are long, lean, gaunt, black Abyssinians. The rest of the crew is perhaps made up of Lascars or other natives of India, small feeble-looking men, whom one sees eating their meagre fare of rice and curry, half a dozen of them squatting on the deck round a bowl of it, into which they dip their long bony fingers. They have to make up by their numbers for their want of muscle. To see a dozen of them pulling at a rope you would think each of them was afraid of breaking it. It is a sight to see all the crew mustered on Sunday morning for inspection on the after-deck,ranged in order according to their different departments, and each dressed in his cleanest and best. Side by side with the English sailor’s dress are turbans, and tunics of green, red, or yellow silk, and bracelets, and all the brilliant colours of Oriental costume. Yet all this heterogeneous crew is in perfect discipline. The orderliness, cleanliness, and smartness of the decks, and of everything on board, is a great contrast to the ordinary condition of a merchant ship, and comes very near to that of a man-of-war.
It is about a fortnight’s run from King George’s Sound to Galle. Every day the heat sensibly increases. It is hotter, it seems, in the Indian Ocean than on the Atlantic. One day the thermometer on deck, with a double awning above, stands at 91°, and I cannot discover that there is any artificial heat to affect it. In the cabin it is about 87°, but with the ports open, and a wind-sail to direct a current of air in upon the berths, sleep is not difficult. The Lascars in their scanty linen clothing, who have been huddling miserably round the funnel for warmth, now squat on the deck and play at cards, flinging them down with great animation when their turn comes to play; but they still keep near the funnel as a pleasant friend and neighbour. Down the stoke-hole, where the Abyssinian firemen feed the fire, the thermometer is said to stand at 156°—I did not go down to try—and one of the long gaunt black figures, with scarcely a rag of clothing on and shining with moisture emerges to the upper regions from time to time, and a bucket of water is thrown over him torevive him. The mysterious little pulley-wheels near the saloon ceiling are explained now; for punkahs are put up, and little bronze-faced boys in white shirts and trousers squat in pretty attitudes, exactly like the figures which support French lamps, and pull away patiently at the punkah-strings to make the heat more tolerable for those who are sitting at table. The flying-fish know their latitude to a degree, and make their appearance as soon as the tropic is entered. But they are not so numerous as in the Atlantic, or else the steamer scares them away. One flying higher than usual and losing its presence of mind strikes one of the ship’s officers on the head, nearly knocking him off the bridge where he was walking, and breaking its own head with the force of the shock. Day by day the sunsets grow more gorgeous, and the crimson and purple lights on the calm oily water more dreamily beautiful. The concavity of the crescent moon turns more and more upwards till it is cup-like and horizontal. The Great Bear reappears, but in humble fashion close to the horizon, and draggling his poor dear tail in the water as if half ashamed, and languishing in these hot southern latitudes. At last a penknife stuck in the bulwarks at noon casts no shadow; for we are leaving the Southern Hemisphere.
One morning the screw has stopped, and the sun rises, and the morning mist lifts, to show us an open bay into which the surf dashes unrestrained, and which is fringed on one side with a thick wood of cocoa-nut palms and tropical undergrowth, with here and there abungalow or a little hut, while on the other side of the bay a road runs along the base of stone-faced ramparts covered with the freshest, greenest turf, and leads up to a seventeenth-century gateway, by which a crowd of people are passing in and out. Within the walls are the red and purple tiled roofs, and strong tropical lights and shadows of Galle. It is an exquisite scene to wake up to from the formless solitude of mid-ocean. Paddling round about the vessel are swarms of small craft, barge-like boats, and long picturesque canoes scarcely more than a foot wide, made of a hollowed tree, and balanced on the tossing swell by a small beam fastened parallel to them by outriggers six or eight feet long and resting on the water. They are manned by natives vociferously vending newspapers, fruit, or trinkets, or bargaining to take passengers ashore.
Ashore all go as soon as possible, and through the gateway, and up a street shaded by a green avenue, till the great Oriental Hotel is reached, the large broad verandah of which is crowded with people in all the strange costumes and head-gear of Anglo-Indians, talking, flirting, smoking, eating, drinking, bargaining, and abusing the (at this time of year) more than Indian heat. They are passengers going to, or returning from, India and China. For Galle is the Rugby Junction of Anglo-Asiatic traffic, where the China and Australia steamers disgorge their passengers into the larger vessel from Calcutta and Madras—many rills flowing into one stream—and there are often a couple of days to be spent here waiting—days inexpressiblyfull of interest and enjoyment to those to whom the scenes of India and of the tropics are new and unfamiliar.
The streets are full of natives, clothed or half-clothed in white or coloured cotton dress. The driver of your hired carriage who sits close in front of you is perhaps bare to the waist; but the dark-brown colour of his skin prevents you from being keenly alive to the fact, and you are not much impressed with any deficiency in his apparel. Men as well as women wear their black hair long and tied in a knot, or confined by tortoiseshell combs. Indeed the general appearance of men and women is so much alike that at first sight one is almost puzzled to distinguish them. A lady lately arrived at Galle, talking to a friend who had been much in her house and knew all about her establishment, happened to mention her ayah. The friend expressed surprise, as he did not know she had an ayah; and after explanation, and summoning the servant in question, she was made aware that her servant was a man, and had never pretended to be anything else, though he had been acting as nurse, and washing and dressing the baby for a week or two.
Crowding round the verandah of the hotel is a host of importunate vendors of tortoiseshell, baskets, ivory boxes, and jewellery. As regards jewellery there is ample scope for their roguery, which is without limit. A fellow will ask you fourteen pounds for what he calls a real sapphire ring, and gladly let you have it, after a little bargaining, for two shillings. Europeanstake unblushing rascality of this sort as a matter of course, and treat it, not with indignation, but with contempt. Even in a few hours one can understand a little why the natives are so often treated by Europeans much in the way that a good-natured man treats a useful dog.
The hotel is a great building, with the bedrooms for greater coolness separated by partitions reaching only part of the way to the ceiling, so that a word or a snore is sometimes audible in every room from one end to the other of the long corridor; and many are the reproaches, expletives, bolsters, boots, and other missiles, which are flung over the partition at anyone who offends in this latter particular. In some of the private houses the doors are for the same reason made so as to come within a foot of the ground, and consequently when anyone is coming into the room there is ample time and opportunity for inspecting his or her feet, &c. before any other part of the person is visible.
The heat does not admit of much going about in the middle of the day; but towards evening you can drive beyond town and suburbs, and see the palms on each side bending over the road, and the rich swampy soil teeming with rank vegetation, and feast your senses on the often-described wonders of a tropical climate. Beautiful as it is, it is not to be compared for beauty (one is told) with the interior. And there is no time or opportunity for seeing that, for punctual to its day the great black hull of the steamer from Calcutta and Madras, which is to pick up all the passengers for Suez,rounds the point and enters the bay, and by daybreak next morning she is off again.
A huge monster she is of two thousand six hundred tons or thereabouts, with a charming long flush deck from bows to stern of immense length. She is cram-full; for it is the end of March, and all Indians who can get away—officers, civilians, invalids, and young children—are on their way home before the hot season sets in. Some cabins have been reserved for passengers waiting at Galle, and we from Australia are a not very welcome addition to the already large number, and are probably set down as at best successful diggers, and as most likely holders of tickets-of-leave. But with or without tickets-of-leave we soon shake down, and get on pretty well with each other, for there is no room for quarrelling. There are some five hundred human beings on board, of whom more than half are passengers, and of these above fifty are children. They are pale, sickly, quiet little beings, these children, or one does not know how the ship would hold them, for they are under little or no control. Often half a dozen or more have been confided to the care of one invalid lady, who has about enough to do to take care of herself. As for the ayahs, of whom there are plenty, they have not a shadow of authority over their charges, and submit as a matter of course to thumps and abuse in answer to their feeble threats and entreaties.
It is worth while to stroll over the ship about midnight, when everyone has settled down for the night.The season is not yet advanced and hot enough to oblige everyone to sleep on deck, but on the after-deck under the awning are perhaps twenty men-passengers asleep—some on mattresses brought up from their cabins, others on the benches or on cane lounging-chairs. Forward, near the funnel and galley and on the forecastle, the bright moonlight shines upon bodies lying as thick and as motionless as on a battle-field after a battle—some wrapped head and all in their garments of white linen or coarse cloth, some in their natural bare black to the waist, some huddled together, head to feet, in groups, and some alone, and all without the slightest regard to whether they are in the gangway or not. In the saloon, on the tables, or on the narrow benches, with one leg on the table to keep them from rolling off, lie white-shirted and white-trousered stewards; and on the floor at their mistresses’ cabin-doors are prostrate ayahs, so exactly in the way that in the half-light one almost has to feel for them to avoid treading on them in passing. On the lockers in the stern are a few children and an ayah or two; but the head-quarters of the children are down below on the lower-deck, where they are laid out by dozens on the table, on cushions, shawls, and anything that comes to hand, while over them the punkah, its strings connected with the engines, fans the air steadily the whole night through. And all seem to sleep peacefully and even comfortably each after his fashion, for the north-east monsoon is just dying away, there is not a wave to stir the ship, and every port and scuttle to withintwo or three feet of the-water-line is open to admit the air.
We carry on the monsoon till Cape Guardafui is in sight; then comes a strong south-east breeze heavy with moisture blowing up the gulf, and on the morning but one after, the rising sun lights up brilliantly the red and yellow mountains which stretch across the little peninsula of Aden, rising up behind it in high peaks and ridges abrupt and sharp and serrated like the Dolomite mountains of the Tyrol. And in an hour or two theTarusdrops her anchor within a quarter of a mile of the shore, among steamers and ships of war and transports on their way to Annesley Bay to feed the Abyssinian Expedition, now near its goal at Magdala.
Like King George’s Sound, Aden is an isolated corner of a continent, cut off by deserts from land-communication with the outer world of civilization, and important only as a refuge or coaling-station for shipping. Wild tribes of Bedouins are the only inhabitants of the deserts which bound the peninsula, and for some years after our occupation of it they made repeated attacks upon us; and strong fortifications, garrisoned chiefly by Bombay sepoy regiments, now guard the small space where it is possible to penetrate the strong natural defence of the mountains.
And the impression of strange wild primeval desolation is increased as we land. Moist as is the air in the gulf, the atmosphere of Aden itself is as dry as can be conceived, and tempts one, protected by a green veil and an umbrella, to ride or walk, or even run, in spiteof the fierce sun which blazes out of the unclouded sky. Scarcely a morsel of vegetation, not a blade of grass is to be seen, only at rare intervals in the sand a leafless shrub. For at Aden not a drop of rain falls often for years in succession, though the mountain-peak not four miles from the harbour is capped with cloud. Water is supplied chiefly by distillation from the sea, and also from huge tanks. We drive to see them, passing strings of camels, and tall, dirty, melancholy, scowling Arabs, and a wretched Arab village of huts of mud and straw like a warren of ill-instructed rabbits, and turn up a hill through fortifications and covered ways hewn in the rock, where white-coated sepoy sentinels stand on guard, and down on the other side to the cantonments and to the Arab town of Aden itself, for where we landed is not Aden proper but the Bunder or port. They are a strange memorial of the past, those tanks. They are hewn out of the solid rock one above another in a steep gulley of the cloud-capt mountain, from whence at long intervals torrents of water pour down and fill them. Tradition assigns them an origin anterior to the time of Abraham, but there is no fragment of sculpture to help to give them a date; they are only huge irregular basins in the rock, capable of holding from a quarter to two or three millions of gallons each, and for centuries were almost choked with rubbish, till within the last few years our Government has cleared them out and made them available again.
Early the same afternoon we are steaming awayagain for Suez, and at midnight pass through the Straits of Babel-mandeb. The little island of Perim divides the straits into two. We pass through the eastern and narrower passage, which is not much more than a mile wide, and by the bright moonlight both the island and the Arabian coast are clearly visible. A few years ago, when the importance of the position of the island first became apparent, and while consuls and envoys were busy discussing to whom it belonged—for it was then uninhabited—the English quietly took possession of it, and are now admitted to have thereby acquired a good title to it. An officer or two and about half a company of troops from Aden are located on it as garrison, and considering that it is perfectly bare, without an inhabitant or a tree, or a blade of grass, or a hill, or water, or, I believe, any animal except rats, and in a climate like a furnace, it must be about as unpleasant a prison to be confined in as well could be found anywhere.
And now we are in the much-dreaded and famous Red Sea. Dreaded it justly is on account of the terrible heat there during the summer months. A captain now on another station told me that when on this line he sometimes lost passengers (most of them invalids, probably) at the rate of one or two every day. Why the heat is so intolerable is not very clear, as the actual temperature by the thermometer is never remarkably high—nothing like so high as in many other places where heat is not much complained of. Fortunately, we are too early in the season to suffer from it, and it is scarcely so hot as before reaching Aden.The strong north-westerly breeze too, which almost always blows down the sea, meets us and refreshes us. How the navigation was ever performed before the days of steam is a marvel. One of the steamers once fell in with a sailing-ship bound from Aden to Suez, andseventy-five days outfrom the former place, all the crew ill or dead with heat, and only the master and one boy available for duty.
The narrowness of the sea and the dangerous coral reefs which lie on either side, and on which so many fine steamers have been stranded, make all vessels keep to one uniform course straight up the centre of it, out of sight of land on either side. Every day some huge steamer—more often there are two or three—passes with its living freight. For the first time we fully realise what a mighty highway of the world it is. Year by year the long sea-passage by the Cape to India, is less and less followed. Even troops now often take the overland route, and if ever the Suez canal is opened to vessels of large tonnage, the change will be greater still. After centuries of disuse, the old, old road from Europe to India is open again with a hundred times the traffic and importance that it ever had before.
Once only does our vessel pause. A suffering invalid, hoping in vain to reach home alive, has died during the night. In the morning the burial-service is read over the coffin wrapped in a Union-jack, and from a large port on the saloon-deck forward it is lowered gently into the sea; and after scarce fiveminutes’ interval, the engines throb again, and the screw revolves, and the resting-place, unknown and unmarked, is left behind.
On the sixth day from Aden we are in the gulf of Suez. To the east is a flat coast, and beyond is the range of Sinai, scarcely visible. On the west are sandstone cliffs of brilliant red and yellow contrasting exquisitely with the bright blue sky, and lighting up at sunset with the warmest and most gorgeous colours. But we are in Egypt now, and English painters as well as writers have already made the rest of our journey familiar ground, and in their presence it is becoming to be silent. Not that the sights and interests and pleasures of the homeward journey are by any means exhausted yet, or that what is still to be seen loses by comparison with what we have passed. Those who are not pressed for time may stay a week at Cairo, and taking the Southampton instead of the Marseilles route, may also stay at Malta, and during the few hours spent at Gibraltar, walk over the rock and town; and from the vessel’s deck as she proceeds see the pretty Spanish and Portuguese coasts for much of the way from thence to Cape St. Vincent.
Melbourne, King George’s Sound, Galle, Aden, Suez, the Pyramids, Alexandria, Malta, Gibraltar, Southampton Water. What a list for nine weeks’ luxurious travelling! A fresh country about once a week, a fresh continent, almost, once a fortnight!
Truly a P. & O. steamer is a wonderful institution, worthy to take a high place among the unquestionablesuccesses of the last thirty years. Once, in Tasmania, in a remote little bay of D’Entrecasteaux’ channel, I came across a man getting his living laboriously by hewing timber in the bush. He told me he had worked in the gang which turned the first sod (or nearly the first) of the new docks in which the first P. & O. ships were cradled. One man sows and toils that another may reap. Few reap so richly, so abundantly, in these days, as those whose time and means enable them to travel on freshly made tracks to see the glory of a new world.