ON BOARD A PACIFIC STEAMER.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XV, Issue 63, 13 March 1880, Page 1

ON BOARD A PACIFIC STEAMER.

A correspondent writing an account of a trip to £an Francisco from China says : — y , I am on board the City of Pekin, one of the splendid fleet of the American Pacific Mail Company, and one of the largest iron screw steamers afloat. With a capacity of over 5000 tons register, a length of 440 feet, and a beam of 33 feut, this leviathan of the deep has four funnels, five masts, and twenty-one lifeboats rising above her 1 magnificent deck. If you look over' her wards towering above the water you 0..~ the big waves coma along and break und foam against her ponderous sides as if striking an ironbound coast ; look over her stern you see her powerful screw, with its blades nine feet in length lashing the water' into a seething eddy of foam as she cleaves her rapid course over the bosoas of tbe ocean. From the outset of our journey we have averaged our three huodred kcota per day, at tbe expense of forty tons of coal for every 24 hours, and now ttfj 5000 miles of our voyage are all but at' an end. For 25 days days and nights we have been ploughing our way o?er a desert saa, and siooe we left the coast of Japan an i Eaw the anew-crowned summit of Fusiami sink gradually beneath the waves we have not eocountered the sign of a living thing save one or two wild looking se. birds, and now and again a shoal of flying fish, which, flashing like a shower of silver through the air, dived again into their watery home. During tha whole of this time 2000 human beings have eaten, drunk, and slept on board this floating, city, and if the diurnal movements of each individual bad been regulated by an elaborate system of clockwork, matters could not have prosaeded more harmoniously. I doa T t know whether there was any superfluous elbow-room on board the Ark when it was *• full inside" with its varied freight; but, here, although there are no less thin 1500 Chinese passengers in the steerage 200 or 300 Europeans of all nations in! the saloon, besides a crow composed of English, Irish, and Americans, there is plenty of room to move about, and a moat complete organisation reigns, from stem to stern. I have travelled: on all the principal steam Hoes throughout the world, and I can truly Bay that; this branch of the Pacific mail service, is one of the best manned linea afloat.; The Company is one of the moat| powerful and wealthy now existing in. any country, and by means of a fleet of. first olass steamers is, binding Japan! and China on the Pacific coast, and turning a golden tide of commerce andj travel from Asia to America. With, very few exceptions all the Celestial passengers are of tbe coolie class.! Mast of them hail from Canton. The; majority of them are young and evidently very poor; but each one, appears to have left tbe Flowejy Land with a buoyant heart to seek his fortunes in: the grand country towards which we; are now tending. Each man, too, has, paid 30 dollars for his passage, a ad; from the moment this army of long; tailed pagans walked on board not ai single act of insubordination has, been

recorded against the motley crowd. Three timea every day they have co many tons of rice, so many tons of fried Gsh and have swallowed barrels of pork, and three times- every day they have swilled countless gallons of tea Then turned into their bunks, or knelt down to "chin chin" their miniature household gods, or played cards, or smoked their pipes, or in default of better amusement they have shaved each others' heads, plucked out each others eyebrows aud minutely examined each others pig-taila in a very suggestive way. Good temper, mutual respect for each other, untiring patience, aod methodical action have characterised ail their movements, and it is only just now that a thrill of excitement appears to have pissed through (hem, for these 1500 yellow men are crowded on deck, and every shaven skull and every almond eye is turned towards the east where a dark line rising like a vapoury clou 1 above did borizjn heralds our approach to a new world.