LETTER I. 



Auckland— The Mail Steamer Nevada— A South Sea Hurricane— The 

 South Pacific Doldrums — The Tropic of Cancer. 



Steamer Nevada, North Pacific, Jan. igtA. 



A white, unwinking, scintillating sun blazed down upon 

 Auckland, New Zealand. Along the white glaring road from 

 Onehunga, dusty trees and calla lilies drooped with the heat. 

 Dusty thickets sheltered the cicada, whose triumphant din 

 grated and rasped through the palpitating atmosphere. In 

 dusty enclosures, supposed to be gardens, shrivelled geraniums, 

 scattered sparsely, alone defied the heat. Flags drooped in 

 the stifling air. Men on the verge of sunstroke plied their 

 tasks mechanically. Dogs, with flabby and protruding tongues, 

 hid themselves away under archway shadows. The stones of 

 the sidewalks and the bricks of the houses radiated a furnace 

 heat. All nature was limp, dusty, groaning, gasping. The 

 day was the climax of a burning fortnight of heat, drought, 

 and dust, of baked, cracked, dewless land, and oily, breezeless 

 seas, of glaring days, passing through fiery sunsets into stifling 

 nights. 



I only remained long enough in the capital to observe that 

 it had a look of having seen better days, and that its business 

 streets had an American impress, and, taking a boat at a wharf, 

 in whose seams the pitch was melting, I went off to the steamer 

 Nevada, which was anchored out in the bay, preferring to spend 

 the night in her than in the unbearable heat on shore. She 

 belongs to the Webb line, an independent mail adventure, now 

 dying a natural death, undertaken by the New Zealand Govern- 

 ment, as much probably out of jealousy of Victoria as anything 

 else. She nearly foundered on her last voyage, and her pas- 

 sengers unanimously signed a protest against her unseaworthy 

 condition. She was condemned by the Government surveyor, 

 and her mails were sent to Melbourne. She has, however, 



