Chapter XIX.Out on the Pacific.So pleasant was my visit in the city of the Golden Gate that it was with some regret that I left San Francisco and took the electric-lighted steamshipColumbiafor Portland. It was certainly very fortunate for me while there to make those side excursions to Monterey, to the Geysers, and to other places, and yet have the pleasure each time of returning to a good home, while so many Eastern people were cast upon the friendless hotels. This pleasant refuge was at the residence of Mr. A. B. Crosby, formerly of Rockville, Conn., into whose family I was most cordially received, and will always be remembered as a bright spot in my wanderings.The excitement of encampment week and the excursions taken prevented my making the acquaintance of many wheelmen, but I found Mr. Cook, who took such an unfortunate fall at the Hartford races last year, Chief Consul Welch, Mr. George H. Adams, and several others, all gentlemen, as, it is almost needless to say, is the status of the great majority of wheelmen everywhere. There were a great many New England people among the five hundred or more passengers aboard the steamer, but the only Connecticut people I foundwere from New Haven and Birmingham. Still we were quite a distinguished company. The large frame, the bald head, and smiling face of ex-Commander-in-chief Burdette, the empty sleeve and gray head of the newly-elected Commander-in-chief Fairchild, Governor Robie of Maine, Professor Williams of Brown University, my tutor, in the sense that his delightful account of his European trip first set me wild to be a bicycle traveler there, and many other intelligent ladies and gentlemen helped to form a party that cheered and happily waved their handkerchiefs as the iron steamer left the wharf, turned about, and passing through a fleet of ferry-boats in the harbor, glided out through the Golden Gate, and into a bank of fog and a gale of cold raw wind.How different from what I anticipated. When climbing up to the Big Trees and into the Yosemite, through the hot sand, the suffocating dust, and under a blazing sun, how I looked forward to this ride on the Pacific. In place of the dry and barren country covered with dust, I pictured the broad ocean of bright blue. Instead of hours of raging thirst I looked forward to the time when it would be “water, water everywhere,” and plenty of ice water to drink. When I was so tired I sat right down in the road in the dirt, with the sun pouring its rays down, and the air so stiflingly still that the sweat ran down my whole body clear to my ankles, then I thought how nice it would be sitting on deck in an easy chair, with the cool breezes making the bright sun feel just comfortable. How cosy it would seem, and how I would rest, take the physical rest I had so well earned, and the mental rest that would result, with nothing in the blue sky or the smooth waters to cause the slightest mental action. I would just be lazy and do nothing but eat, lay around on deck and dream and sleep. After so many months of constant sight-seeing and hurried thinking, the prospect of a chance to remain inactive,mentally and physically, for a while, seemed like paradise to me. It was the prospect of this delightful sail on a smooth ocean, under a perfectly clear sky and bright sun, that induced me to buy the excursion ticket at Salt Lake City, and it was in anticipation of this voyage that my spirits kept up climbing into the Sierras. The thought of seasickness never entered my mind, and if it had I should have scoffed at the idea of my being sick if others were. All this and more I anticipated.What I realized is this and a great deal more. As I said, we went out through the Golden Gate into a bank of fog and a gale of cold, raw wind. The sound of the fog horn at the entrance of the harbor, which I had heard so many days and nights during the past three weeks, was the only thing to indicate that we were not a thousand miles at sea. But that mournful sound soon died away, and when the fog occasionally lifted afterwards, it showed us that we were indeed out of sight of land, upon an ocean I had so innocently supposed was pacific. How much misery I saw there, and how many times I wished I had kept on from the Geysers and ridden up to Portland on the wheel! I could have done it and reached there as soon as by boat, but I did not want to miss the delightful sea voyage. No, I would not then have missed it for all the world. But I would now.The fog and cold wind made the ladies’ cabin the most comfortable place, and for a while the piano and the strong voices of the many veterans on board singing their familiar songs made the time pass pleasantly, but before dark the trouble began. About ten o’clock I went below, thinking I was fortunate to even secure a clean bunk in the bow of a boat where the state-rooms were all taken for two weeks ahead. My bunk-mate, a fine old gentleman from Kansas, had already turned in, but he came crawling out from hisbunk, saying, “I can’t stand this any longer.” I did notice the boat lifted things up higher and let them fall lower than it did during the day, but I felt all right. “O, I stayed here too long, I guess,” said my friend, as he started for the round box of sawdust near the bunk. A gentleman in the upper bunk had been leaning out of his bed, intently but quietly looking down in this same box for some time, but this doleful remark of my bunk-mate seemed to suddenly touch his sympathetic nerve, and they mutually, and at the same time, cast away all bitterness in the same small box of sawdust. My friend’s head, which was the lower of the two suspended over the box, and which was scantily clothed with gray hair, received a shampoo of a variety of ingredients, but he scarcely minded this in his haste to get away, and I undressed and went to sleep after a while, notwithstanding the place was full of men apparently tearing themselves all to pieces during most of the night.Yes, I slept some but not as soundly as I have done, for the seventy-five sick men down there occupied my thoughts some. And after a while I got the notion into my head that the boat would not go down into the trough of the sea so far if I held myself up a little, so I did. When the boat went up, up, every nerve in my body tingled, and I felt a prickling sensation clear to the ends of my fingers and toes, and the higher up the boat went the stronger was the nervous action. But I did not feel sick. Then when the boat went down I straightened out stiff and rigid in order, if possible, to hold the boat. Although I saw it did not make much difference with the boat whether I tried to sustain it or not, yet I could not relax my muscles sufficiently to rest easily. But in the morning, before I could get washed, I found out what sea-sickness was, but only to a slight degree, and for an hour or two.Lying out on one of the benches on the upper deck with the cold, raw wind blowing into his pale face, was a young gentleman of thirty, with blue eyes, but a face so smooth and fair that he looked much younger, another Bartley Hubbard, if I ever pictured one. He had been stripped of the blanket he had brought up from the hole of misery, where it seems he had spent the night near me, the steward saying, as he took the blanket, “he must go below to lay down,” but rather than do that he lay shivering in the wind. I had found it impossible to keep warm, even by pacing the decks, and, contrary to rules, had robbed my bunk of its blankets and was walking about covered from head to foot in the warm wool; but it did not take long to tuck that living representative of the leading character in “A Modern Instance” up warm with my blankets, and when the steward came again to take them, Bartley said the captain, or some fellow with a uniform cap, gave them to him. Watching my chances I soon had another pair about me, but Professor Williams, with heavy underclothing and overcoat, was unable to keep from shivering, and so forcing those last ones upon him, I successfully committed a third burglary without being detected, although the steward came to me afterwards and wanted to know “who was carrying off the blankets.” I said I had taken my own on deck, but truthfully replied I did not know whether any one else had taken theirs or not.Bartley was unable to go down to supper, and after I had brought him some tea and crackers we enjoyed the sudden change in the faces of many of the lady passengers, as they sympathizingly patted him on his feverish cheeks, called him “little fellow,” and asked if he was thinking of his mother, and then were told he was thinking of his wife and children at home. They didn’t pat his cheeks again after that. After we had waited till everybody else had turned in and he hadflatly refused to go below, under any consideration, we laid down together on the deck, near the middle of the boat, and slept warm and well all night with the cold wind blowing across our faces.The first afternoon out the beds were made up on the floor of the ladies’ cabin before three o’clock, and the bustling stewardess said to a spinster, among others: “Come, take your bed now if you want to be sure of it.” The spinster hesitated, before all the gentlemen then in the cabin, and looked shy, but the stewardess repeated the request with impatience, almost, when the maiden lady replied in a low, complaining voice, as she looked at the gentlemen present: “Why, I don’t want to go to bed now.” She felt relieved, however, when she found it was only to claim the bed by placing baggage on it.The same afternoon I was talking with some lady friends, where the deck was rather crowded, when I heard, just behind me, the voice of this same kind, but business-like stewardess, saying, “Come! out of the way, little boy,” and turning around to see who the youngster was I saw that whoever he was he had suddenly disappeared, and that I was the only person in her way. The ladies, who had just a moment before expressed admiration for the manly effort that it seemed to them was necessary to make such a trip as I had, now smiled, in fact all did, everyone within hearing, and no one laughed heartier than the “little boy.”And what an appetite I expected to have from sniffing the salt sea air all day, when, in reality, after that short season of personal disgust with the inner man in the morning, I got sufficient nourishment by sniffing the boiled-vegetable air every time I passed the ladies’ cabin door. The very sound of the gong was nauseating, and what in the world that young fellow wanted to go around through the differentdecks whanging away eighteen times a day, and calling on us to go down and eat, when the thought of doing so was more than sufficient! Apparently, from the sound of the gong, it was eat, eat all the time; but I doubt if many did more than go through the form of eating. I did not eat more than one square meal out of the eight on the boat.Forty-five hours after we lost sight of land the boat stopped and floated around in the fog among a lot of buoys, and soon after got across the bar and steamed up the Columbia River to Astoria, and a short time later to Portland. The whole voyage was a cold, foggy, uninteresting ride; the sun never shone once; but on the boat the experience to me was new, and disagreeable as much of it was, I am not sorry for it. Still, very few of the passengers will take that trip again. We were still further disappointed in finding the atmosphere along the river very smoky, and after stopping over night at Portland, a city finely built, but like San Francisco, with a Chinatown in the very heart of it, we took the train, or most of the boat party did, at 3 p. m., and went slowly up the south bank of the Columbia River.A bicycle is some bother in traveling on the cars, for where they run such long trains as they do on all these trans-continental lines, and consequently have so much baggage to load, the machine is the last piece to be taken aboard, and as it is always at owner’s risk I often have to hand it up as the train is starting, and then jump on myself, rather than leave it to be left, perhaps. The steamship company would neither take it as a part of the one hundred and fifty pounds of baggage allowed every passenger nor allow me to care for it, and I had to ship it by freight, still at owner’s risk, at an anticipated expense of three or four dollars, but when I saw it unload on the wharf at Portland,among a lot of horses and truck wagons, I thought the owner was running a great risk of having it smashed by leaving it there any longer, and so I walked away with it, asking questions of no one. Whether the owner took too great a risk by so doing is still unsettled.The ride up the river by boat, with a clear atmosphere, must certainly equal in grandeur that up the Hudson, but the smoke was too dense to see across the water and we could only catch a glimpse of the shadowy outlines of the high mountains on either side and see for a few seconds the beautiful little waterfalls coming down over the rocks. Then again it was rather aggravating to hear the roar of the river as we stopped in the night at a station somewhere, and to go out and see the ghost of what must have been a magnificent sight by daylight—some great falls in the river.I have seen and heard just enough of this country to wish to make another trip, but it should be taken four or five months earlier in the year; and other mistakes can be avoided. What there was in the trip to the Geysers to cause it I can’t think, for the roads were smooth (no such pounding as there was riding through Illinois), but the result of that trip has been another eruption, not at the Geysers, but upon me. Where there is the Devil’s kitchen, the Devil’s gristmill, and lots of other articles of furniture belonging to his satanic majesty, it is certainly a devil of a place for a wheelman to visit, but in going there I did not look forward to any such outcome of the trip. And that is just what is the matter with me now. I can’t look forward to the unpleasant results. In short I have boiled over again, and as a result of these eruptions I shall carry back with me as a souvenir of the trip, many miniature craters of extinct volcanoes.
Chapter XIX.Out on the Pacific.So pleasant was my visit in the city of the Golden Gate that it was with some regret that I left San Francisco and took the electric-lighted steamshipColumbiafor Portland. It was certainly very fortunate for me while there to make those side excursions to Monterey, to the Geysers, and to other places, and yet have the pleasure each time of returning to a good home, while so many Eastern people were cast upon the friendless hotels. This pleasant refuge was at the residence of Mr. A. B. Crosby, formerly of Rockville, Conn., into whose family I was most cordially received, and will always be remembered as a bright spot in my wanderings.The excitement of encampment week and the excursions taken prevented my making the acquaintance of many wheelmen, but I found Mr. Cook, who took such an unfortunate fall at the Hartford races last year, Chief Consul Welch, Mr. George H. Adams, and several others, all gentlemen, as, it is almost needless to say, is the status of the great majority of wheelmen everywhere. There were a great many New England people among the five hundred or more passengers aboard the steamer, but the only Connecticut people I foundwere from New Haven and Birmingham. Still we were quite a distinguished company. The large frame, the bald head, and smiling face of ex-Commander-in-chief Burdette, the empty sleeve and gray head of the newly-elected Commander-in-chief Fairchild, Governor Robie of Maine, Professor Williams of Brown University, my tutor, in the sense that his delightful account of his European trip first set me wild to be a bicycle traveler there, and many other intelligent ladies and gentlemen helped to form a party that cheered and happily waved their handkerchiefs as the iron steamer left the wharf, turned about, and passing through a fleet of ferry-boats in the harbor, glided out through the Golden Gate, and into a bank of fog and a gale of cold raw wind.How different from what I anticipated. When climbing up to the Big Trees and into the Yosemite, through the hot sand, the suffocating dust, and under a blazing sun, how I looked forward to this ride on the Pacific. In place of the dry and barren country covered with dust, I pictured the broad ocean of bright blue. Instead of hours of raging thirst I looked forward to the time when it would be “water, water everywhere,” and plenty of ice water to drink. When I was so tired I sat right down in the road in the dirt, with the sun pouring its rays down, and the air so stiflingly still that the sweat ran down my whole body clear to my ankles, then I thought how nice it would be sitting on deck in an easy chair, with the cool breezes making the bright sun feel just comfortable. How cosy it would seem, and how I would rest, take the physical rest I had so well earned, and the mental rest that would result, with nothing in the blue sky or the smooth waters to cause the slightest mental action. I would just be lazy and do nothing but eat, lay around on deck and dream and sleep. After so many months of constant sight-seeing and hurried thinking, the prospect of a chance to remain inactive,mentally and physically, for a while, seemed like paradise to me. It was the prospect of this delightful sail on a smooth ocean, under a perfectly clear sky and bright sun, that induced me to buy the excursion ticket at Salt Lake City, and it was in anticipation of this voyage that my spirits kept up climbing into the Sierras. The thought of seasickness never entered my mind, and if it had I should have scoffed at the idea of my being sick if others were. All this and more I anticipated.What I realized is this and a great deal more. As I said, we went out through the Golden Gate into a bank of fog and a gale of cold, raw wind. The sound of the fog horn at the entrance of the harbor, which I had heard so many days and nights during the past three weeks, was the only thing to indicate that we were not a thousand miles at sea. But that mournful sound soon died away, and when the fog occasionally lifted afterwards, it showed us that we were indeed out of sight of land, upon an ocean I had so innocently supposed was pacific. How much misery I saw there, and how many times I wished I had kept on from the Geysers and ridden up to Portland on the wheel! I could have done it and reached there as soon as by boat, but I did not want to miss the delightful sea voyage. No, I would not then have missed it for all the world. But I would now.The fog and cold wind made the ladies’ cabin the most comfortable place, and for a while the piano and the strong voices of the many veterans on board singing their familiar songs made the time pass pleasantly, but before dark the trouble began. About ten o’clock I went below, thinking I was fortunate to even secure a clean bunk in the bow of a boat where the state-rooms were all taken for two weeks ahead. My bunk-mate, a fine old gentleman from Kansas, had already turned in, but he came crawling out from hisbunk, saying, “I can’t stand this any longer.” I did notice the boat lifted things up higher and let them fall lower than it did during the day, but I felt all right. “O, I stayed here too long, I guess,” said my friend, as he started for the round box of sawdust near the bunk. A gentleman in the upper bunk had been leaning out of his bed, intently but quietly looking down in this same box for some time, but this doleful remark of my bunk-mate seemed to suddenly touch his sympathetic nerve, and they mutually, and at the same time, cast away all bitterness in the same small box of sawdust. My friend’s head, which was the lower of the two suspended over the box, and which was scantily clothed with gray hair, received a shampoo of a variety of ingredients, but he scarcely minded this in his haste to get away, and I undressed and went to sleep after a while, notwithstanding the place was full of men apparently tearing themselves all to pieces during most of the night.Yes, I slept some but not as soundly as I have done, for the seventy-five sick men down there occupied my thoughts some. And after a while I got the notion into my head that the boat would not go down into the trough of the sea so far if I held myself up a little, so I did. When the boat went up, up, every nerve in my body tingled, and I felt a prickling sensation clear to the ends of my fingers and toes, and the higher up the boat went the stronger was the nervous action. But I did not feel sick. Then when the boat went down I straightened out stiff and rigid in order, if possible, to hold the boat. Although I saw it did not make much difference with the boat whether I tried to sustain it or not, yet I could not relax my muscles sufficiently to rest easily. But in the morning, before I could get washed, I found out what sea-sickness was, but only to a slight degree, and for an hour or two.Lying out on one of the benches on the upper deck with the cold, raw wind blowing into his pale face, was a young gentleman of thirty, with blue eyes, but a face so smooth and fair that he looked much younger, another Bartley Hubbard, if I ever pictured one. He had been stripped of the blanket he had brought up from the hole of misery, where it seems he had spent the night near me, the steward saying, as he took the blanket, “he must go below to lay down,” but rather than do that he lay shivering in the wind. I had found it impossible to keep warm, even by pacing the decks, and, contrary to rules, had robbed my bunk of its blankets and was walking about covered from head to foot in the warm wool; but it did not take long to tuck that living representative of the leading character in “A Modern Instance” up warm with my blankets, and when the steward came again to take them, Bartley said the captain, or some fellow with a uniform cap, gave them to him. Watching my chances I soon had another pair about me, but Professor Williams, with heavy underclothing and overcoat, was unable to keep from shivering, and so forcing those last ones upon him, I successfully committed a third burglary without being detected, although the steward came to me afterwards and wanted to know “who was carrying off the blankets.” I said I had taken my own on deck, but truthfully replied I did not know whether any one else had taken theirs or not.Bartley was unable to go down to supper, and after I had brought him some tea and crackers we enjoyed the sudden change in the faces of many of the lady passengers, as they sympathizingly patted him on his feverish cheeks, called him “little fellow,” and asked if he was thinking of his mother, and then were told he was thinking of his wife and children at home. They didn’t pat his cheeks again after that. After we had waited till everybody else had turned in and he hadflatly refused to go below, under any consideration, we laid down together on the deck, near the middle of the boat, and slept warm and well all night with the cold wind blowing across our faces.The first afternoon out the beds were made up on the floor of the ladies’ cabin before three o’clock, and the bustling stewardess said to a spinster, among others: “Come, take your bed now if you want to be sure of it.” The spinster hesitated, before all the gentlemen then in the cabin, and looked shy, but the stewardess repeated the request with impatience, almost, when the maiden lady replied in a low, complaining voice, as she looked at the gentlemen present: “Why, I don’t want to go to bed now.” She felt relieved, however, when she found it was only to claim the bed by placing baggage on it.The same afternoon I was talking with some lady friends, where the deck was rather crowded, when I heard, just behind me, the voice of this same kind, but business-like stewardess, saying, “Come! out of the way, little boy,” and turning around to see who the youngster was I saw that whoever he was he had suddenly disappeared, and that I was the only person in her way. The ladies, who had just a moment before expressed admiration for the manly effort that it seemed to them was necessary to make such a trip as I had, now smiled, in fact all did, everyone within hearing, and no one laughed heartier than the “little boy.”And what an appetite I expected to have from sniffing the salt sea air all day, when, in reality, after that short season of personal disgust with the inner man in the morning, I got sufficient nourishment by sniffing the boiled-vegetable air every time I passed the ladies’ cabin door. The very sound of the gong was nauseating, and what in the world that young fellow wanted to go around through the differentdecks whanging away eighteen times a day, and calling on us to go down and eat, when the thought of doing so was more than sufficient! Apparently, from the sound of the gong, it was eat, eat all the time; but I doubt if many did more than go through the form of eating. I did not eat more than one square meal out of the eight on the boat.Forty-five hours after we lost sight of land the boat stopped and floated around in the fog among a lot of buoys, and soon after got across the bar and steamed up the Columbia River to Astoria, and a short time later to Portland. The whole voyage was a cold, foggy, uninteresting ride; the sun never shone once; but on the boat the experience to me was new, and disagreeable as much of it was, I am not sorry for it. Still, very few of the passengers will take that trip again. We were still further disappointed in finding the atmosphere along the river very smoky, and after stopping over night at Portland, a city finely built, but like San Francisco, with a Chinatown in the very heart of it, we took the train, or most of the boat party did, at 3 p. m., and went slowly up the south bank of the Columbia River.A bicycle is some bother in traveling on the cars, for where they run such long trains as they do on all these trans-continental lines, and consequently have so much baggage to load, the machine is the last piece to be taken aboard, and as it is always at owner’s risk I often have to hand it up as the train is starting, and then jump on myself, rather than leave it to be left, perhaps. The steamship company would neither take it as a part of the one hundred and fifty pounds of baggage allowed every passenger nor allow me to care for it, and I had to ship it by freight, still at owner’s risk, at an anticipated expense of three or four dollars, but when I saw it unload on the wharf at Portland,among a lot of horses and truck wagons, I thought the owner was running a great risk of having it smashed by leaving it there any longer, and so I walked away with it, asking questions of no one. Whether the owner took too great a risk by so doing is still unsettled.The ride up the river by boat, with a clear atmosphere, must certainly equal in grandeur that up the Hudson, but the smoke was too dense to see across the water and we could only catch a glimpse of the shadowy outlines of the high mountains on either side and see for a few seconds the beautiful little waterfalls coming down over the rocks. Then again it was rather aggravating to hear the roar of the river as we stopped in the night at a station somewhere, and to go out and see the ghost of what must have been a magnificent sight by daylight—some great falls in the river.I have seen and heard just enough of this country to wish to make another trip, but it should be taken four or five months earlier in the year; and other mistakes can be avoided. What there was in the trip to the Geysers to cause it I can’t think, for the roads were smooth (no such pounding as there was riding through Illinois), but the result of that trip has been another eruption, not at the Geysers, but upon me. Where there is the Devil’s kitchen, the Devil’s gristmill, and lots of other articles of furniture belonging to his satanic majesty, it is certainly a devil of a place for a wheelman to visit, but in going there I did not look forward to any such outcome of the trip. And that is just what is the matter with me now. I can’t look forward to the unpleasant results. In short I have boiled over again, and as a result of these eruptions I shall carry back with me as a souvenir of the trip, many miniature craters of extinct volcanoes.
Chapter XIX.Out on the Pacific.
So pleasant was my visit in the city of the Golden Gate that it was with some regret that I left San Francisco and took the electric-lighted steamshipColumbiafor Portland. It was certainly very fortunate for me while there to make those side excursions to Monterey, to the Geysers, and to other places, and yet have the pleasure each time of returning to a good home, while so many Eastern people were cast upon the friendless hotels. This pleasant refuge was at the residence of Mr. A. B. Crosby, formerly of Rockville, Conn., into whose family I was most cordially received, and will always be remembered as a bright spot in my wanderings.The excitement of encampment week and the excursions taken prevented my making the acquaintance of many wheelmen, but I found Mr. Cook, who took such an unfortunate fall at the Hartford races last year, Chief Consul Welch, Mr. George H. Adams, and several others, all gentlemen, as, it is almost needless to say, is the status of the great majority of wheelmen everywhere. There were a great many New England people among the five hundred or more passengers aboard the steamer, but the only Connecticut people I foundwere from New Haven and Birmingham. Still we were quite a distinguished company. The large frame, the bald head, and smiling face of ex-Commander-in-chief Burdette, the empty sleeve and gray head of the newly-elected Commander-in-chief Fairchild, Governor Robie of Maine, Professor Williams of Brown University, my tutor, in the sense that his delightful account of his European trip first set me wild to be a bicycle traveler there, and many other intelligent ladies and gentlemen helped to form a party that cheered and happily waved their handkerchiefs as the iron steamer left the wharf, turned about, and passing through a fleet of ferry-boats in the harbor, glided out through the Golden Gate, and into a bank of fog and a gale of cold raw wind.How different from what I anticipated. When climbing up to the Big Trees and into the Yosemite, through the hot sand, the suffocating dust, and under a blazing sun, how I looked forward to this ride on the Pacific. In place of the dry and barren country covered with dust, I pictured the broad ocean of bright blue. Instead of hours of raging thirst I looked forward to the time when it would be “water, water everywhere,” and plenty of ice water to drink. When I was so tired I sat right down in the road in the dirt, with the sun pouring its rays down, and the air so stiflingly still that the sweat ran down my whole body clear to my ankles, then I thought how nice it would be sitting on deck in an easy chair, with the cool breezes making the bright sun feel just comfortable. How cosy it would seem, and how I would rest, take the physical rest I had so well earned, and the mental rest that would result, with nothing in the blue sky or the smooth waters to cause the slightest mental action. I would just be lazy and do nothing but eat, lay around on deck and dream and sleep. After so many months of constant sight-seeing and hurried thinking, the prospect of a chance to remain inactive,mentally and physically, for a while, seemed like paradise to me. It was the prospect of this delightful sail on a smooth ocean, under a perfectly clear sky and bright sun, that induced me to buy the excursion ticket at Salt Lake City, and it was in anticipation of this voyage that my spirits kept up climbing into the Sierras. The thought of seasickness never entered my mind, and if it had I should have scoffed at the idea of my being sick if others were. All this and more I anticipated.What I realized is this and a great deal more. As I said, we went out through the Golden Gate into a bank of fog and a gale of cold, raw wind. The sound of the fog horn at the entrance of the harbor, which I had heard so many days and nights during the past three weeks, was the only thing to indicate that we were not a thousand miles at sea. But that mournful sound soon died away, and when the fog occasionally lifted afterwards, it showed us that we were indeed out of sight of land, upon an ocean I had so innocently supposed was pacific. How much misery I saw there, and how many times I wished I had kept on from the Geysers and ridden up to Portland on the wheel! I could have done it and reached there as soon as by boat, but I did not want to miss the delightful sea voyage. No, I would not then have missed it for all the world. But I would now.The fog and cold wind made the ladies’ cabin the most comfortable place, and for a while the piano and the strong voices of the many veterans on board singing their familiar songs made the time pass pleasantly, but before dark the trouble began. About ten o’clock I went below, thinking I was fortunate to even secure a clean bunk in the bow of a boat where the state-rooms were all taken for two weeks ahead. My bunk-mate, a fine old gentleman from Kansas, had already turned in, but he came crawling out from hisbunk, saying, “I can’t stand this any longer.” I did notice the boat lifted things up higher and let them fall lower than it did during the day, but I felt all right. “O, I stayed here too long, I guess,” said my friend, as he started for the round box of sawdust near the bunk. A gentleman in the upper bunk had been leaning out of his bed, intently but quietly looking down in this same box for some time, but this doleful remark of my bunk-mate seemed to suddenly touch his sympathetic nerve, and they mutually, and at the same time, cast away all bitterness in the same small box of sawdust. My friend’s head, which was the lower of the two suspended over the box, and which was scantily clothed with gray hair, received a shampoo of a variety of ingredients, but he scarcely minded this in his haste to get away, and I undressed and went to sleep after a while, notwithstanding the place was full of men apparently tearing themselves all to pieces during most of the night.Yes, I slept some but not as soundly as I have done, for the seventy-five sick men down there occupied my thoughts some. And after a while I got the notion into my head that the boat would not go down into the trough of the sea so far if I held myself up a little, so I did. When the boat went up, up, every nerve in my body tingled, and I felt a prickling sensation clear to the ends of my fingers and toes, and the higher up the boat went the stronger was the nervous action. But I did not feel sick. Then when the boat went down I straightened out stiff and rigid in order, if possible, to hold the boat. Although I saw it did not make much difference with the boat whether I tried to sustain it or not, yet I could not relax my muscles sufficiently to rest easily. But in the morning, before I could get washed, I found out what sea-sickness was, but only to a slight degree, and for an hour or two.Lying out on one of the benches on the upper deck with the cold, raw wind blowing into his pale face, was a young gentleman of thirty, with blue eyes, but a face so smooth and fair that he looked much younger, another Bartley Hubbard, if I ever pictured one. He had been stripped of the blanket he had brought up from the hole of misery, where it seems he had spent the night near me, the steward saying, as he took the blanket, “he must go below to lay down,” but rather than do that he lay shivering in the wind. I had found it impossible to keep warm, even by pacing the decks, and, contrary to rules, had robbed my bunk of its blankets and was walking about covered from head to foot in the warm wool; but it did not take long to tuck that living representative of the leading character in “A Modern Instance” up warm with my blankets, and when the steward came again to take them, Bartley said the captain, or some fellow with a uniform cap, gave them to him. Watching my chances I soon had another pair about me, but Professor Williams, with heavy underclothing and overcoat, was unable to keep from shivering, and so forcing those last ones upon him, I successfully committed a third burglary without being detected, although the steward came to me afterwards and wanted to know “who was carrying off the blankets.” I said I had taken my own on deck, but truthfully replied I did not know whether any one else had taken theirs or not.Bartley was unable to go down to supper, and after I had brought him some tea and crackers we enjoyed the sudden change in the faces of many of the lady passengers, as they sympathizingly patted him on his feverish cheeks, called him “little fellow,” and asked if he was thinking of his mother, and then were told he was thinking of his wife and children at home. They didn’t pat his cheeks again after that. After we had waited till everybody else had turned in and he hadflatly refused to go below, under any consideration, we laid down together on the deck, near the middle of the boat, and slept warm and well all night with the cold wind blowing across our faces.The first afternoon out the beds were made up on the floor of the ladies’ cabin before three o’clock, and the bustling stewardess said to a spinster, among others: “Come, take your bed now if you want to be sure of it.” The spinster hesitated, before all the gentlemen then in the cabin, and looked shy, but the stewardess repeated the request with impatience, almost, when the maiden lady replied in a low, complaining voice, as she looked at the gentlemen present: “Why, I don’t want to go to bed now.” She felt relieved, however, when she found it was only to claim the bed by placing baggage on it.The same afternoon I was talking with some lady friends, where the deck was rather crowded, when I heard, just behind me, the voice of this same kind, but business-like stewardess, saying, “Come! out of the way, little boy,” and turning around to see who the youngster was I saw that whoever he was he had suddenly disappeared, and that I was the only person in her way. The ladies, who had just a moment before expressed admiration for the manly effort that it seemed to them was necessary to make such a trip as I had, now smiled, in fact all did, everyone within hearing, and no one laughed heartier than the “little boy.”And what an appetite I expected to have from sniffing the salt sea air all day, when, in reality, after that short season of personal disgust with the inner man in the morning, I got sufficient nourishment by sniffing the boiled-vegetable air every time I passed the ladies’ cabin door. The very sound of the gong was nauseating, and what in the world that young fellow wanted to go around through the differentdecks whanging away eighteen times a day, and calling on us to go down and eat, when the thought of doing so was more than sufficient! Apparently, from the sound of the gong, it was eat, eat all the time; but I doubt if many did more than go through the form of eating. I did not eat more than one square meal out of the eight on the boat.Forty-five hours after we lost sight of land the boat stopped and floated around in the fog among a lot of buoys, and soon after got across the bar and steamed up the Columbia River to Astoria, and a short time later to Portland. The whole voyage was a cold, foggy, uninteresting ride; the sun never shone once; but on the boat the experience to me was new, and disagreeable as much of it was, I am not sorry for it. Still, very few of the passengers will take that trip again. We were still further disappointed in finding the atmosphere along the river very smoky, and after stopping over night at Portland, a city finely built, but like San Francisco, with a Chinatown in the very heart of it, we took the train, or most of the boat party did, at 3 p. m., and went slowly up the south bank of the Columbia River.A bicycle is some bother in traveling on the cars, for where they run such long trains as they do on all these trans-continental lines, and consequently have so much baggage to load, the machine is the last piece to be taken aboard, and as it is always at owner’s risk I often have to hand it up as the train is starting, and then jump on myself, rather than leave it to be left, perhaps. The steamship company would neither take it as a part of the one hundred and fifty pounds of baggage allowed every passenger nor allow me to care for it, and I had to ship it by freight, still at owner’s risk, at an anticipated expense of three or four dollars, but when I saw it unload on the wharf at Portland,among a lot of horses and truck wagons, I thought the owner was running a great risk of having it smashed by leaving it there any longer, and so I walked away with it, asking questions of no one. Whether the owner took too great a risk by so doing is still unsettled.The ride up the river by boat, with a clear atmosphere, must certainly equal in grandeur that up the Hudson, but the smoke was too dense to see across the water and we could only catch a glimpse of the shadowy outlines of the high mountains on either side and see for a few seconds the beautiful little waterfalls coming down over the rocks. Then again it was rather aggravating to hear the roar of the river as we stopped in the night at a station somewhere, and to go out and see the ghost of what must have been a magnificent sight by daylight—some great falls in the river.I have seen and heard just enough of this country to wish to make another trip, but it should be taken four or five months earlier in the year; and other mistakes can be avoided. What there was in the trip to the Geysers to cause it I can’t think, for the roads were smooth (no such pounding as there was riding through Illinois), but the result of that trip has been another eruption, not at the Geysers, but upon me. Where there is the Devil’s kitchen, the Devil’s gristmill, and lots of other articles of furniture belonging to his satanic majesty, it is certainly a devil of a place for a wheelman to visit, but in going there I did not look forward to any such outcome of the trip. And that is just what is the matter with me now. I can’t look forward to the unpleasant results. In short I have boiled over again, and as a result of these eruptions I shall carry back with me as a souvenir of the trip, many miniature craters of extinct volcanoes.
So pleasant was my visit in the city of the Golden Gate that it was with some regret that I left San Francisco and took the electric-lighted steamshipColumbiafor Portland. It was certainly very fortunate for me while there to make those side excursions to Monterey, to the Geysers, and to other places, and yet have the pleasure each time of returning to a good home, while so many Eastern people were cast upon the friendless hotels. This pleasant refuge was at the residence of Mr. A. B. Crosby, formerly of Rockville, Conn., into whose family I was most cordially received, and will always be remembered as a bright spot in my wanderings.
The excitement of encampment week and the excursions taken prevented my making the acquaintance of many wheelmen, but I found Mr. Cook, who took such an unfortunate fall at the Hartford races last year, Chief Consul Welch, Mr. George H. Adams, and several others, all gentlemen, as, it is almost needless to say, is the status of the great majority of wheelmen everywhere. There were a great many New England people among the five hundred or more passengers aboard the steamer, but the only Connecticut people I foundwere from New Haven and Birmingham. Still we were quite a distinguished company. The large frame, the bald head, and smiling face of ex-Commander-in-chief Burdette, the empty sleeve and gray head of the newly-elected Commander-in-chief Fairchild, Governor Robie of Maine, Professor Williams of Brown University, my tutor, in the sense that his delightful account of his European trip first set me wild to be a bicycle traveler there, and many other intelligent ladies and gentlemen helped to form a party that cheered and happily waved their handkerchiefs as the iron steamer left the wharf, turned about, and passing through a fleet of ferry-boats in the harbor, glided out through the Golden Gate, and into a bank of fog and a gale of cold raw wind.
How different from what I anticipated. When climbing up to the Big Trees and into the Yosemite, through the hot sand, the suffocating dust, and under a blazing sun, how I looked forward to this ride on the Pacific. In place of the dry and barren country covered with dust, I pictured the broad ocean of bright blue. Instead of hours of raging thirst I looked forward to the time when it would be “water, water everywhere,” and plenty of ice water to drink. When I was so tired I sat right down in the road in the dirt, with the sun pouring its rays down, and the air so stiflingly still that the sweat ran down my whole body clear to my ankles, then I thought how nice it would be sitting on deck in an easy chair, with the cool breezes making the bright sun feel just comfortable. How cosy it would seem, and how I would rest, take the physical rest I had so well earned, and the mental rest that would result, with nothing in the blue sky or the smooth waters to cause the slightest mental action. I would just be lazy and do nothing but eat, lay around on deck and dream and sleep. After so many months of constant sight-seeing and hurried thinking, the prospect of a chance to remain inactive,mentally and physically, for a while, seemed like paradise to me. It was the prospect of this delightful sail on a smooth ocean, under a perfectly clear sky and bright sun, that induced me to buy the excursion ticket at Salt Lake City, and it was in anticipation of this voyage that my spirits kept up climbing into the Sierras. The thought of seasickness never entered my mind, and if it had I should have scoffed at the idea of my being sick if others were. All this and more I anticipated.
What I realized is this and a great deal more. As I said, we went out through the Golden Gate into a bank of fog and a gale of cold, raw wind. The sound of the fog horn at the entrance of the harbor, which I had heard so many days and nights during the past three weeks, was the only thing to indicate that we were not a thousand miles at sea. But that mournful sound soon died away, and when the fog occasionally lifted afterwards, it showed us that we were indeed out of sight of land, upon an ocean I had so innocently supposed was pacific. How much misery I saw there, and how many times I wished I had kept on from the Geysers and ridden up to Portland on the wheel! I could have done it and reached there as soon as by boat, but I did not want to miss the delightful sea voyage. No, I would not then have missed it for all the world. But I would now.
The fog and cold wind made the ladies’ cabin the most comfortable place, and for a while the piano and the strong voices of the many veterans on board singing their familiar songs made the time pass pleasantly, but before dark the trouble began. About ten o’clock I went below, thinking I was fortunate to even secure a clean bunk in the bow of a boat where the state-rooms were all taken for two weeks ahead. My bunk-mate, a fine old gentleman from Kansas, had already turned in, but he came crawling out from hisbunk, saying, “I can’t stand this any longer.” I did notice the boat lifted things up higher and let them fall lower than it did during the day, but I felt all right. “O, I stayed here too long, I guess,” said my friend, as he started for the round box of sawdust near the bunk. A gentleman in the upper bunk had been leaning out of his bed, intently but quietly looking down in this same box for some time, but this doleful remark of my bunk-mate seemed to suddenly touch his sympathetic nerve, and they mutually, and at the same time, cast away all bitterness in the same small box of sawdust. My friend’s head, which was the lower of the two suspended over the box, and which was scantily clothed with gray hair, received a shampoo of a variety of ingredients, but he scarcely minded this in his haste to get away, and I undressed and went to sleep after a while, notwithstanding the place was full of men apparently tearing themselves all to pieces during most of the night.
Yes, I slept some but not as soundly as I have done, for the seventy-five sick men down there occupied my thoughts some. And after a while I got the notion into my head that the boat would not go down into the trough of the sea so far if I held myself up a little, so I did. When the boat went up, up, every nerve in my body tingled, and I felt a prickling sensation clear to the ends of my fingers and toes, and the higher up the boat went the stronger was the nervous action. But I did not feel sick. Then when the boat went down I straightened out stiff and rigid in order, if possible, to hold the boat. Although I saw it did not make much difference with the boat whether I tried to sustain it or not, yet I could not relax my muscles sufficiently to rest easily. But in the morning, before I could get washed, I found out what sea-sickness was, but only to a slight degree, and for an hour or two.
Lying out on one of the benches on the upper deck with the cold, raw wind blowing into his pale face, was a young gentleman of thirty, with blue eyes, but a face so smooth and fair that he looked much younger, another Bartley Hubbard, if I ever pictured one. He had been stripped of the blanket he had brought up from the hole of misery, where it seems he had spent the night near me, the steward saying, as he took the blanket, “he must go below to lay down,” but rather than do that he lay shivering in the wind. I had found it impossible to keep warm, even by pacing the decks, and, contrary to rules, had robbed my bunk of its blankets and was walking about covered from head to foot in the warm wool; but it did not take long to tuck that living representative of the leading character in “A Modern Instance” up warm with my blankets, and when the steward came again to take them, Bartley said the captain, or some fellow with a uniform cap, gave them to him. Watching my chances I soon had another pair about me, but Professor Williams, with heavy underclothing and overcoat, was unable to keep from shivering, and so forcing those last ones upon him, I successfully committed a third burglary without being detected, although the steward came to me afterwards and wanted to know “who was carrying off the blankets.” I said I had taken my own on deck, but truthfully replied I did not know whether any one else had taken theirs or not.
Bartley was unable to go down to supper, and after I had brought him some tea and crackers we enjoyed the sudden change in the faces of many of the lady passengers, as they sympathizingly patted him on his feverish cheeks, called him “little fellow,” and asked if he was thinking of his mother, and then were told he was thinking of his wife and children at home. They didn’t pat his cheeks again after that. After we had waited till everybody else had turned in and he hadflatly refused to go below, under any consideration, we laid down together on the deck, near the middle of the boat, and slept warm and well all night with the cold wind blowing across our faces.
The first afternoon out the beds were made up on the floor of the ladies’ cabin before three o’clock, and the bustling stewardess said to a spinster, among others: “Come, take your bed now if you want to be sure of it.” The spinster hesitated, before all the gentlemen then in the cabin, and looked shy, but the stewardess repeated the request with impatience, almost, when the maiden lady replied in a low, complaining voice, as she looked at the gentlemen present: “Why, I don’t want to go to bed now.” She felt relieved, however, when she found it was only to claim the bed by placing baggage on it.
The same afternoon I was talking with some lady friends, where the deck was rather crowded, when I heard, just behind me, the voice of this same kind, but business-like stewardess, saying, “Come! out of the way, little boy,” and turning around to see who the youngster was I saw that whoever he was he had suddenly disappeared, and that I was the only person in her way. The ladies, who had just a moment before expressed admiration for the manly effort that it seemed to them was necessary to make such a trip as I had, now smiled, in fact all did, everyone within hearing, and no one laughed heartier than the “little boy.”
And what an appetite I expected to have from sniffing the salt sea air all day, when, in reality, after that short season of personal disgust with the inner man in the morning, I got sufficient nourishment by sniffing the boiled-vegetable air every time I passed the ladies’ cabin door. The very sound of the gong was nauseating, and what in the world that young fellow wanted to go around through the differentdecks whanging away eighteen times a day, and calling on us to go down and eat, when the thought of doing so was more than sufficient! Apparently, from the sound of the gong, it was eat, eat all the time; but I doubt if many did more than go through the form of eating. I did not eat more than one square meal out of the eight on the boat.
Forty-five hours after we lost sight of land the boat stopped and floated around in the fog among a lot of buoys, and soon after got across the bar and steamed up the Columbia River to Astoria, and a short time later to Portland. The whole voyage was a cold, foggy, uninteresting ride; the sun never shone once; but on the boat the experience to me was new, and disagreeable as much of it was, I am not sorry for it. Still, very few of the passengers will take that trip again. We were still further disappointed in finding the atmosphere along the river very smoky, and after stopping over night at Portland, a city finely built, but like San Francisco, with a Chinatown in the very heart of it, we took the train, or most of the boat party did, at 3 p. m., and went slowly up the south bank of the Columbia River.
A bicycle is some bother in traveling on the cars, for where they run such long trains as they do on all these trans-continental lines, and consequently have so much baggage to load, the machine is the last piece to be taken aboard, and as it is always at owner’s risk I often have to hand it up as the train is starting, and then jump on myself, rather than leave it to be left, perhaps. The steamship company would neither take it as a part of the one hundred and fifty pounds of baggage allowed every passenger nor allow me to care for it, and I had to ship it by freight, still at owner’s risk, at an anticipated expense of three or four dollars, but when I saw it unload on the wharf at Portland,among a lot of horses and truck wagons, I thought the owner was running a great risk of having it smashed by leaving it there any longer, and so I walked away with it, asking questions of no one. Whether the owner took too great a risk by so doing is still unsettled.
The ride up the river by boat, with a clear atmosphere, must certainly equal in grandeur that up the Hudson, but the smoke was too dense to see across the water and we could only catch a glimpse of the shadowy outlines of the high mountains on either side and see for a few seconds the beautiful little waterfalls coming down over the rocks. Then again it was rather aggravating to hear the roar of the river as we stopped in the night at a station somewhere, and to go out and see the ghost of what must have been a magnificent sight by daylight—some great falls in the river.
I have seen and heard just enough of this country to wish to make another trip, but it should be taken four or five months earlier in the year; and other mistakes can be avoided. What there was in the trip to the Geysers to cause it I can’t think, for the roads were smooth (no such pounding as there was riding through Illinois), but the result of that trip has been another eruption, not at the Geysers, but upon me. Where there is the Devil’s kitchen, the Devil’s gristmill, and lots of other articles of furniture belonging to his satanic majesty, it is certainly a devil of a place for a wheelman to visit, but in going there I did not look forward to any such outcome of the trip. And that is just what is the matter with me now. I can’t look forward to the unpleasant results. In short I have boiled over again, and as a result of these eruptions I shall carry back with me as a souvenir of the trip, many miniature craters of extinct volcanoes.