CHAPTER XII 



IMPRESSIONS OF TRAVEL 



IN CABINED SHIPS AT SEA. 



The sky o'erarches here, we feel the undulating deck beneath our 



feet, 



We feel the long pulsation, ebb and flow of endless motion, 

 The tones of unseen mystery, the vague and vast suggestions of 



the briny world, the liquid-flowing syllables, 

 The perfume, the faint creaking of the cordage, the melancholy 



rhythm, 



The boundless vista, and the horizon far and dim are all here, 

 And this is the ocean's poem. 



WALT WHITMAN. 



T TO MR I As the months go on the old ties pull 

 yet more strongly. The East is said to call ; 

 but surely no voice was ever so imperative in its 

 demands upon man or woman as that of Home. 



The last month of my year in India, spent in 

 Bombay, went all too quickly : not that I think Bombay, 

 of all places, one to linger in for long, but that, as the 

 last four weeks come to days, it is borne regretfully 

 in upon one that this is not an ordinary good-bye, but 

 a good-bye to a country, to a race, as different from our 

 own dear, damp, foggy England and our hard-working, 

 stolid Britons as a bull-dog is different from a lanky, 

 yellow pariah. 



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