IO 



HA WAIL 



[letter i. 



have to pick every piece over because of weevils. Existence 

 at night is an unequal fight with rats and cockroaches, and at 

 meals with the stewards for time to eat. The stewards out- 

 number the passengers, and are the veriest riff-raff I have seen 

 on board ship. At meals, when the captain is not below, their 

 sole object is to hurry us from the table in order that they may 

 sit down to a protracted meal; they are insulting and dis- 

 obliging, and since illness has been on board, have shown a 

 want of common humanity which places them below the rest of 

 their species. The unconcealed hostility with which they 

 regard us is a marvellous contrast to the natural or purchasable 

 civility or servility which prevails on British steamers. It has 

 its comic side too, and we are content to laugh at it, and at all 

 the other oddities of this vaunted " Mail Line." " 



Our most serious grievance was the length of time that we 

 were kept in the damp inter-island region of the Tropic of 

 Capricorn. Early breakfasts, cold plunge baths, and the perfect 

 ventilation of our cabins, only just kept us alive. We read, 

 wrote, and talked like automatons, and our voices sounded 

 thin and far away. We decided that heat was less felt in 

 exercise, made up an afternoon quoit party, and played, un- 

 sheltered from the nearly vertical sun on decks so hot that we 

 required thick boots for the protection of our feet, but for 

 three days were limp and faint, and hardly able to crawl about 

 or eat. The nights were insupportable. We used to lounge 

 on the bow, and retire late at night to our cabins, to fight the 

 heat, and scare rats and kill cockroaches with slippers, until 

 driven by the solar heat to rise again unrefreshed to warstle 

 through another relentless day. We read the " Idylls of the 

 King," and talked of misty meres and reedy fens, of the cool 

 north, with its purple hills, leaping streams, and life-giving 

 breezes, of long northern winters, and ice and snow, but the 

 realities of sultriness and damp scared away our coolest imagi- 

 nations. 



In this dismal region, when about forty miles east of Tutuila, 

 a beast popularly known as the "Flying fox"* alighted on 

 our rigging, and was eventually captured as a prize for the 

 zoological collection at San Francisco. He is a most interest- 

 ing animal, something like an exaggerated bat. His wings are 

 formed of a jet black membrane, and have a highly polished 

 claw at the extremity of each, and his feet consist of five 



* A Fingiferous bat. 



