THE SAN FRANCISCO MAIL SERVICE.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4496, 17 August 1875, Page 3

THE SAN FRANCISCO MAIL SERVICE.

DISCOMFORTS OP A PASSENGER. By the inward mail we have a letter from an esteemed citizen of Wellington who was a passenger outwards two mails ago. lie writes from Honolulu as follows, and certainly the picture he draws is not an inviting one Arrived by the Taranaki, we hurried on board the Mikado, and were greeted by a scene of confusion which argued badly for the discipline of the ship. Sailors, ship’s officers, passengers, cads, and sharpers, were apparently jostling and tumbling over each other like black-headed worms in a boy’s fishing pot. The bar at the corner of the poop drove a brisk trade, and red-faced, excited brokers returned again and again to have another drink before the vessel started. A Yankee second officer, with- a most unearthly voice, roared out incoherent and impossible orders. Baggage was kicked about everywhere, sore shins were at a discount, the hoarse whistle of the steamer droned out again and again, everybody on board danced the devil’s hornpipe. The agitation and confusion grew more and more intense, and the countenances of the New Zealand passengers reminded one of the River Styx. The Taranaki, after a stormy passage, arrived late at Mauukau. The railway authorities, with an extraordinary insight into the fitness of things, humbugged away an hour and a half of our time. We were late for the mail ship—the detested of the great foozleum in command, mere waifs and strays, objects of pity to each other and of contempt to the ship s authorities and those superior _ beings whose livers are annually parboiled in New South Wales. It did not take us many minutes after our arrival on board to realise that iu the opinion of the A.S.N. Company, and their ruby-faced commander, mere New Zealanders were of no importance. The ship was on the point of sailing none of us had any berths, and most of us had no tickets. [The agent, Mr. Jarvis, had been suddenly charged, our telegrams of three weeks or a month old were as so much waste paper in a pigeon-hole. Nobody knew anything about us, and nobody cared. There was neither agent nor purser on hoard, and one might better expect sympathy from a wooden nutmeg than from the self-satisfied captain of the ship, who walked up and down and admired himself. , Amongst us was a braw laddie about tut. 2in., named Fraser, wrapped iu his pladdie. He was a picture of manly beauty and good temper. With the practical turn of his nation, he took in the position in a moment, and rushing about tbe ship, stood whisky to everybody he met with a naval aspect. Equal to anything, he soon completed his review, and as I stood wrangling for my smaller parcels with enemies that only grew as they were vanquished, I saw Eraser come out of a long passage, and as he passed he whispered to a brither Scot, “Come along Mac, it is a d—d take in, the ship’s crowded already, let us win ashore and buy blankets, travel second-class and save the money.” Fraser is a wealthy man, he hates humbug, and is as merry as a bee, and honest as the sun. Full of indignation, he made a rush for it, Mac panting after him. They missed their passages, and we missed their company. Their luggage was all carried away and chucked into the hold ; and yet it is difficult to class them amongst the unfortunate. . , m It is a mistake to travel in the Mikado, She is a badly found ship, badly arranged for passenger traffic, and the captain is one of those npn who think the world is m,yl> for them and the few who have stomach enough persistently to flatter their folly. Well, we were pretty miserable. Most of ns had nothing to eat that day except a dry biscuit,. though the nice cheerful face of Captain Loyd was as good as food to us. Over twenty of us were huddled together—now on the. maindeck, now in the passages, travelstained, weary, and unkempt. Community of misery cemented much friendship amongst us, and we were formidable in our uniformity of feeling—indignation and disgust. The people of Dunedin would have been surprised to see tbe low estimate set on Mr. Morris, who goes to float £500,000 of Colonial Bank shares. Mr. Steward’s clients in Dunedin might have mistaken his woe-begone expression for sympathy with the disgrace of the profession in the matter of the Smith-Macassey scandal ; and 'Wellington, Napier, and Auckland would all have felt taken down a peg or two had they seen their contributions to tbe prosperity of this line underrated so. The question that would arise in their minds would be this : Does the fact of a man having one short leg and an iron foot to eke it out, justify him in being insolent ? or is_ insolence the peculiar attribute of pursers in the A.S.N. Co.l or has the principle of the interchange of commodities been extended to such a degree in this company that the purser is expected to take it out in insolence ? I incline to the latter hypothesis, because the purser in ordinary circumstances, though tart-looking and dogmatic, is genial with all, and has a sort of icy coldness which is highly intellectual, and seems to have struck from his foot upwards. Be that as it may, it would have sharpened your enjoyment of home pleasures to have seen the New Zealanders soliciting this Vulcan who had done his own forging. The magnificent indifference of the god-like man as he marched us about tbe ship, consulting a piece of paper, in which he evidently expected each fresh time he unfolded it to find the brains he had lost, was, to say the least of it, not cheering. We were afloat, at the commencement of a long sea voyage, and had nowhere to wash ourselves or lay our heads. Neither was it cheering when in our peregrinations we met the captain, who, blazing up in his passion till one might fancy his head would fly off, roared out: “ Purser, purser ! Don’t put any passengers either in my cabin below or ou my deck cabin ; I won’t' have it ! Last time I accommodated passengers and earned for the company over £2OO, and the company would not allow me a shilling port expenses.” The purser looked an altered TTian on the spot ; the iron had evidently entered in, as Bulwer puts it. He replied iu a meek voice, No sir, X won’t sir, only the mail agent. The explosion was more imminent than ever. I never had an approximately near idea of what a colonel of horsemarines might he like until I saw the captain of the Mikado under these circumstances. At length he exclaimed: Purser, I won’t have the mail agent ; the company should not take passengers if they cannot be berthed ; don’t trespass on my accommodation. The purser replied, I won’t sir ; I knowhow to place them. Picture to yourself a cabin in the s.s. Taranaki, the two bunks occupied by New South Wales passengers, the sofa and floor littered with their light baggage, and conceive your feelings when informed the sofa is yours, if the loose things and the majority interested against you will permit you to live there. Even then you won’t have realised the difficulty of your position, for the basin, water-bottle, towels, hats, caps, and cloaks must necessarily take up some room, for there is absolutely no other convenience for these things. Put all these together, and fancy such a genial commander as Captain Lloyd, Kennedy, Wheeler, or the rest, and the evils might be bearable, but fancy in addition a captain not of the most conciliatory manners, and as Mr. John Martin used to say, “ Where are you!” But that is not all Fancy the cabin accommodation in the middle of the ship, the fires blazing under your feet in the tropics, the jar of the engines whizzing in your ears as you

lie within a foot of them, the smoke rushing up through the coalhole through the only ventilating window you have got, and that leading directly into the coalhole and nowhere else. Fancy the galley fires alongside three waterclosets, and these two surrounding almost completely two miserably small bathrooms. Fancy all this in the tropics, and then say Mr. Frazer was unlucky iu missing his passage if you can. My advice to the New Zealand public is don’t travel by this line at all until your interests are considered in fair proportion to the subsidy you pay. I would advise ladies on no account whatever to travel in the Mikado, as there is little or no accommodation, and the captain locks the saloon on deck, to prevent them from sleeping in it in the tropics. lam inclined to think this piece of autocratic dog-in-the-manger policy is unknown to his employers, as I notice the captain has two cabins below converted into one for his personal use, and the A.S.N. Company cannot in addition have presented him with the only deck saloon in the ship.