CHAPTER II. About Coasting Travel. HEAVINGS OF THE SEA AND THE SORROWFUL. ENGLISH STANDOFFISHNESS.

Waikato Times, Volume XXII, Issue 1851, 17 May 1884, Page 2 (Supplement)

CHAPTER 11. About Coasting Travel. HEAVINGS OF THE SEA AND THE SORROWFUL. ENGLISH STANDOFFISHNESS.

I ijon't suppose our passengers behaved very '. differently to other pas&engeis on boaid coasting steamers, so far as tho routine business went. It is ft true saying that when -we see one circus we see all circu3es, past, present, and to come; and it is equally true that when we travel once by sea, coastwise or otherwise, future trips will be mere repetitions. It needi no gift of prophecy to "tell what will occur on a coast voyage. Champagne and handshakings mark the departure on the part of " swells," while the " lower orders " go in for the imbibing of beer and the shedding of tears— "wid one dhiy eye," as I heard a Pcit lander say. As the vessel steams away you may depend every eye will be strained to see the last glimpse of the receding land, and when that " fades o'er the ocean blue," the romantic will take to Byronic musings about the ocean, and to gazing on its billowy, to which hereafter they will make libations. You will surely hear " Tho sea, the'sea, the ever fiec," and the stanzas beginning — " There is a rapture in the pathless woods," etc., quoted repeatedly. The less educated on the steerage deck will sing and danc°, and — if the awful thing is on board— play the concertina. Altogether, it will seem as if happiness alone existed on the sea. But the experienced voyager, the hardened sinner, will watch all this with a sinistei smile. He knows that when the Head 3 are passed and the heavy roll of the ocean sets the ship dancing, the Terpsichorean of the passengers will cease, the ship will heave and they will heave, too. Ho can guage the time almost to a minute when the rcsthetic lady, who is looking over the " beautifully blue," and perchance thinking of the Greek god Poseidon, will turn a decided " yellow-green " colour, and vanish down the hatchway on the arm of her squalling drooping sunflower, looking " spoons," who is almost dead with affright, lest he commit a fanv pas befoie he has handed his companion to her cabin. He is well aware of the moment the young bush "buck" in the tight-fitting cords, which displays his finely-moulded limbs so well ; who has been singing and whistling and capeiing and guffawing, will begin to " wilt," and, after becoming as silent as a grasshopper when the thunderstorm breaks, vanish, no one knows where, or — the fatea being unpropitious — will make a frantic rush to the bulwarks, to which he will remain glued, with eyes intent upon the sea, as if in its depths he beheld a goldmine. And the experienced pea-villain will tell you ere he steps off land how the deck will be cumbered the first night with groaning and moaning corpse-like male and female forms, wrapped up as if they were in the Antartic regions, while below decks the universal attitude, that of devotion, although there is none— rather the reverse with the majority. " The air was blue with curses," remarked a member of the •' talent " to me as he came on deck, looking as yellow as a " keep your temper " sovereign. The old stager can predict a thin dinner-table that night, occupied only by the hardened ones, and he will tell of the morrow, of pale passengers lounging, hollow-cheeked, and yollow-eyed on deck, of feeble attempts to be interested in that moat melancholy of all games, deck quoits, of the tremendous excitement when a school of porpoises or a vessel is sighted, and of the universal resert of the elder males, the steward's bar. All this you are bound to see, and little else ; that is i£ you do not lie in your bunk — they have no atateroomq on the Plunger — and read the last novel. I confess I devoted much of the second day to Ouida's strange creation " Moths," which made me as miserable and as mad against ray kind as the most recent misanthrope could have desired. " Moths " gave me so bad a view of man that it reconciled me to a sojourn in the bush, my destination. It requires a long sea voyage to make Englishmen good friends. Coast voyages and railway travelling are very disagreeable in this regard. For a day or two you hardly speak to your fellow passengers, except, perhaps, to ask for the cruet or the bread. If one did try to become sociable with the frigid stand-off-the-grass English men and women, the chances are matters would be very disagreeable ; the men would suspect you had a design upon their pockets, the minds of the weaker, but more noisy sex, would be filled with alarm too terrible for expression. Eochefoucald it was, I think, who advised us to look upon everyone as a rogue until we found it otherwise. English people certainly regard every stranger as a possible thief or murderer until long association has thawed the ice that covers the English heart, which, however, is discovered, when the ice is romoved, sound as gold. The trouble and difficulty of getting into an English heart is compensated for by the warmth and permanence of the resulting friendship. With French folks the case is very different, as travellers know, everyone in France is at home with strangers in a few minutes and exchanging confidences. In voyages, such as I am describing, one gets to make acquaintances just as the goal is neared. The first day most people are sick, the second they are shy and sufferring a recovery, and it is only on the third that the more volatile begin to form acquaintances. It is then too late. Deck quoits, or fatuous attempt to throw rings of rope -''- k - - >

upon a peg, doea help, in a measure, tb sociality, but most people ohose to " barge." And the friendships formed are evanescent as the niiat ; once you Step upon the land your acquaintance knows j-ou no more. He will not even nod to you in Gfeorge-street. (To be Continued.)