152 Among Men and Horses. 



the natives, who navigate their lateen-rigged craft round 

 the Indian coast, are only fair-weather sailors who put into 

 port and strike work when the monsoons commence to blow. 

 The effect of climate on the manufacture of seamen is well 

 shown by the difference between those of the Levant and 

 Scandinavia. The native sailors are cheap ; they are amen- 

 able to discipline in fine weather ; they do not get drunk ; in 

 port they keep ' lascar watch ' (a continued case of ' all hands ') 

 when loading and unloading, without grumbling ; and conse- 

 quently meet the requirements of the shareholders, who 

 evidently regard the matter, principally, from a cargo point 

 of view, which is the best ' paying ' one. The man who asserts 

 that in times of danger and in moments when self-sacrifice is 

 demanded for the saving of the lives of women and children, 

 a crew composed of Asiatics, is the equal of an English or 

 Scandinavian one, is either a wilful economiser of the truth, or 

 is wholly ignorant of the literature of shipwrecks. I once 

 asked the captain of an M. M. steamer if their line did not 

 employ, like the Spanish Compania Transatlantica, Scotch or 

 English engineers. 'No,' he replied, 'our country gives us a 

 large subsidy for carrying her mails, and expects in return 

 that we shall employ only Frenchmen.' How differently they 

 manage things in England, I am sorry to say. My seafaring 

 acquaintances who have had long experience with Chinese 

 crews, and with whom I have spoken on the subject of the 

 qualifications of these Asiatics, tell me that these men, like 

 their Indian counterparts, are all right when it is fine ; but 

 that they are unreliable and apt to give in to fate, when the 

 weather is bad. I ask my itinerant readers, to whom should 

 they accord their patronage ? To lines that regard the saving 

 of money, and the facility of loading and unloading cargo, as 

 more important matters than the lives of passengers ? I am 

 convinced that the apathy displayed respecting this subject 

 by travellers, is chiefly due to ignorance, and that if the fact 

 of certain lines employing Lascar crews, and others white 

 men, was prominently put before them, they would soon 



