32 THE SEA. 



native merchants and mandarins, who own many coasting steamers. The company is now 

 about to start a line from China to the Sandwich Islands and San Francisco, and it 

 is not improbable that the Chinese emigrants may prefer these steamers to any other. The 

 manager of this Celestial " P. and O. " is one Tong Ken Sing, a shrewd native of 

 Singapore ; and, continues the writer, " under the enlightened control of this man of 

 his epoch, who is equally at home with tails and taels, the company is sure to succeed." 



After leaving the " Golden Gate/' the entrance to the Bay of San Francisco, 

 and passing the rocky Farralones, islands whence a company brings a million of sea- 

 birds' eggs to the city yearly, the voyager by this route will not see land till Japan 

 is reached. The steamships stop nowhere en route. The passengers must depend on 

 their own resources aboard for amusement, and every passing sail becomes an object of 

 greatest interest. Yet still there is always the sea itself, in its varying aspects of 

 placid or turbulent grandeur. " The appearance of the open sea," says Fredol, " far 

 from the shore the boundless ocean is to the man who loves to create a world of 

 his own, in which he can freely exercise his thoughts, filled with sublime ideas of the 

 Infinite. His searching eye rests upon the far-distant horizon; he sees there the ocean 

 and the heavens meeting in a vapoury outline, where the stars ascend and descend, 

 appear and disappear in their turn. Presently this everlasting change in nature awakens 

 in him a vague feeling of that sadness ' which/ says Humboldt, ' lies at the root of 

 all our heartfelt joys/" When the Breton fisherman or mariner puts to sea, his touching 

 prayer is, " Keep me, my God ! my boat is so small, and Thy ocean so wide ! " " We 

 find in the sea," says Lacepede, " unity and diversity, which constitute its beauty ; 

 grandeur and simplicity, which give it sublimity; puissance and immensity, which 

 command our wonder." That immense expanse of water is no mere liquid desert; it 

 teems with life, however little that life may be visible. The inhabitants of the water 

 through which the good ship ploughs her way are as numerous as those of the solid 

 earth; although, unless the great sea-serpent makes its fitful appearance, the experience 

 of a traveller over the Pacific by this route will be repeated. Says he : 



" Few signs of life are visible outside the vessel. Occasionally a whale is reported in 

 sight, but for many days most of the passengers are inclined to think it is only something 

 very ' like one/ till, as the days pass, every person has caught a glimpse of a spout of water 

 suddenly shooting up from the sea without any apparent reason, or of a black line 

 cutting through the blue surface for a moment, and then disappearing to unknown 

 depths. Occasionally, too, one or more sea-birds are seen following in the vessel's wake, 

 sweeping gracefully across and again across the white band of foam, and with difficulty 

 keeping down their natural pace to that of the steam-driven monster. These birds are 

 of two kinds only : the ' Mother Carey's Chicken/ and another, called by the sailors 

 the ' Cape Hen ' a brown bird, rather larger and longer in the wing than a sea-gull. 

 Both birds are visible when we are in mid-ocean, 1,000 miles at least from the nearest 

 dry land." The writer of these pages has seen whales, in the North Pacific, keep up with 

 the vessel on which he was a passenger for half an hour or more together. On one 

 occasion a large whale was swimming abreast of the steamer so closely that rifle 

 and pistol shots were fired at it, some undoubtedly hitting their mark, yet the great 



