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DOWN UNDER WITH THE PRINCE
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
SIGNS AND PORTENTS IN THE FAR EAST
[Illustration: H.R.H. ON DECK: AN INTERRUPTION]
DOWN UNDER WITH
THE PRINCE
BY
EVERARD COTES
WITH TWENTY-THREE ILLUSTRATIONS
METHUEN & CO. LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET, W.C.
LONDON
_First Published in 1921_
This book attempts to be a gangway to the _Renown_ for the reader who
would travel by battle-cruiser, by train, on horseback, by motor, and on
foot, the forty-five thousand miles of his Australasian tour with H.R.H.
the Prince of Wales. It is built by one who travelled, as a
correspondent, with him all the way.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I AT SEA 1
II BARBADOS 9
III PANAMA 15
IV SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA 22
V HONOLULU 27
VI NEPTUNE BOARDS THE _RENOWN_ 35
VII FIJI 41
VIII AUCKLAND 47
IX NORTH ISLAND 59
X SOUTH ISLAND 73
XI ENTERPRISE IN NEW ZEALAND 87
XII VICTORIA 100
XIII NEW SOUTH WALES 116
XIV SOME COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS 130
XV WESTERN AUSTRALIA 140
XVI WHEAT, GOLD, AND LOGGING 148
XVII THE NULLARBOR PLAIN 158
XVIII SOUTH AUSTRALIA 163
XIX TASMANIA 170
XX QUEENSLAND 176
XXI THE JACKAROO AND OTHERS 192
XXII AMONGST THE SHEEP 200
XXIII EASTWARD HO 211
XXIV THE WEST INDIES 221
XXV THE BERMUDAS 236
XXVI THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE TOUR 242
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
H.R.H. ON DECK: AN INTERRUPTION _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
PANAMA CANAL: A SHARP CORNER 16
SURF-BOARDING AT HONOLULU 16
EXCITEMENT GROWS IN AUCKLAND HARBOUR 18
NEW ZEALAND: THE PRIME MINISTER TAKES CHARGE 18
_From a Photograph by Guy, Dunedin_
WELLINGTON: A CANOE IN THE PETONE PAGEANT 64
_From a Photograph by Guy, Dunedin_
"THE MAORI PEOPLE WILL BE TRUE TILL DEATH" 64
WESTPORT CHILDREN: A TUMULT OF FLAGS AND FLOWERS 80
DUNEDIN'S WELCOME 80
_From Photographs by Guy, Dunedin_
WITH AUSTRALIA'S MOST DISTINGUISHED CITIZEN 112
_From a Photograph by the Central News Agency, Ltd._
JUTLAND DAY AT MELBOURNE 112
GOVERNMENT HOUSE GARDENS, NEW SOUTH WALES 128
PERTH, FROM THE KING'S PARK 128
CROSSING THE NULLARBOR PLAIN 160
ABORIGINAL DANCE 160
LEAVING PORT ADELAIDE 170
MOUNT WELLINGTON, HOBART 170
THE BACKBLOCKS: AN UNOFFICIAL FIXTURE 192
HIS FAVOURITE MOUNT 192
EMU ON A SHEEP-RUN 208
GOOD-BYE TO SYDNEY HARBOUR 208
SAMOA MAKES MERRY 224
TRINIDAD: IN THE DRAGON'S MOUTH 224
The thanks of the writer are due to those who have contributed
photographs for the illustrations, and especially to Sir Godfrey Thomas,
Bart.
DOWN UNDER WITH THE PRINCE
I
AT SEA
One March morning of last year, an ordinary train moved out of Waterloo
Station for Portsmouth, and among the ordinary people it carried were at
least two or three who were going further. They sat together and smoked,
and exchanged experiences and speculations. As the train slowed down at
Portsmouth Harbour they looked from the carriage windows and saw the
fighting tops of a big battle-cruiser lifted grey against the sky above
the houses of the foreshore, and one said to another "There she is."
There she was, the _Renown_, in alongside, waiting to sail with His
Royal Highness the Prince of Wales to Australasia. It was the day before
and already the function was in the quickened air. Scraps of coloured
bunting fluttered and flew on the wharf sheds. Dockyard officials gave
orders with more responsibility than ever immediately under their caps.
The travellers from Waterloo went up the gangway to the quarter-deck,
successfully passed the officer of the watch, and found their quarters.
They were the journalists of the tour, there on behalf of the people at
home, that multitudinous "public" which, for lack of accommodation on
the _Renown_, must see the Prince's tour in the convex mirror of the
daily press.
Next day the function flowered. The Royal train rolled in. The red
carpet was spread and the Chief Passenger went up the gangway, with
every sign and circumstance by which his country could mark the occasion
of his going.
Gently the grey turrets slid out from the crowded wharf into the leaden
expanse of harbour. "Auld Lang Syne" rang into the chill wind that
rocked the rowing-boats lining the fairway. Ant-like figures swarmed
into the tall rigging of Nelson's flagship, which lay, bedecked all
over, her old oak sides stiff in checkered squares of black and white,
while her ancient muzzle-loaders banged off a smoky salvo--the senior
ship of the British Navy wishing Godspeed to her fighting junior on
Royal Service starting. The hundred and twenty thousand horse-power
steam turbines of the battle-cruiser quickened their rhythmic throb. The
still shouting crowds ashore faded to dark stains on the Southsea beach.
The red and gold of the Royal standard fluttered down from the main, and
the _Renown_ put out to sea, starting on this pleasant commission with
the same certitude and the same cheeriness, the same discipline and the
same lightness of heart, the same directness of purpose, and above all
things the same absence of fuss, with which she had often gone upon
errands perilous. The voyage, so much anticipated and chronicled, had
begun, and the convincing thing was that it was going to be, from the
_Renown's_ point of view, precisely like other voyages. That impression
came with the first turn of the propeller and remained, it may be said
at once, until the last. The circumstance and ceremonial of the
departure, the pomp of Royalty and the glitter of an Imperial mission
had all merged, before the sun set in the cloud-bank of that March
afternoon, in the sense of function and routine, detached and
disregarding, that controls life in His Majesty's ships at sea.
The _Renown_ is the most recent, the fastest, and the best armed
battle-cruiser in the world. She received at her christening the proud
traditions, extending over three hundred years, of the battles of the
British Navy, having had no less than seven fighting predecessors of the
same name, beginning with the gallant little wooden frigate _Renommee_,
captured in 1653 from the French and transferred to the British
squadrons where she became the first of the famous _Renowns_. The
present vessel was built as lately as 1916, when British need was great.
She remains a record of what those strenuous times could do.
For all her thirty-two thousand tons and gigantic armament of mammoth
guns this great battle-cruiser slides through the water with the
smoothness of the otter. She moved steadily at eighteen knots an hour
from the time she left Portsmouth, a pace which, for this last word in
fighting machines, is mere half-speed, though it is as fast as most
suburban trains can travel. She is so big that surprisingly little
motion is noticeable at sea, though waves wash freely over forecastle
and quarter-deck, contracting the space available for the exercise and
training of the large fighting crew she carries. This intimacy with the
ocean is an impression acquired early and vividly by the civilian on
board a fighting ship. A voyage on a big liner is a quite super-marine
experience by comparison, with a picturesque and phosphorescent basis
some distance below a sleepy deck-chair, and not necessarily observed at
all. A battleship penetrates rather than sails the sea, and takes very
little interest in keeping any part of herself dry. It is impossible to
ignore the ocean on such a vessel. The _Renown_ was no less amphibian
than others of her class. The accommodation contrived for the Prince was
itself liable to ruthless visitation, and even the cabin on the
superstructure, which held the chroniclers of his Odyssey, and was the
highest inhabited spot beneath the bridge, occasionally took
considerably more than enough water to dilute the ink.
Naturally there was nothing in her mission to interfere with the
_Renown's_ ordinary routine at sea. Training, gun-drill and inspections
went on as usual and it was impossible not to be penetrated with the
fact that these things were admirably done. For the passengers the day
began with breakfast in the ward-room at eight. Soon after nine the
whole ship's company assembled in divisions, in different parts of the
vessel. Kits were inspected and the day's duty commenced. One realized,
as one watched the proceedings, how completely the war has abolished the
old navy methods of stiffness and pipeclay. The relations between
officers and men are of the pleasantest and most human character. Nobody
is asked to do anything not of definite importance to the welfare of the
ship, or to the training and the making fit of the men. The navigation,
the keeping of the watches, the working of the complicated machinery by
which the vessel is driven, steered and lighted, the handling of the
gigantic guns, and the running of such supplementary services as those
of supply and wireless, proceed upon simple matter-of-fact business
principles, under the direction of the Captain, who controls the
organization as a whole. Immediately under the Captain are the
Navigation Commander, the Administration Commander, the Engineer
Commander, the Gunnery Lieutenant-Commander, the Torpedo
Lieutenant-Commander, the Principal Medical Officer, and the Paymaster,
each an expert in the particular branch he is responsible for.
Unquestionably an expert too is the ship's parson who, himself belonging
to the upper deck, is related, by his duties, so closely to the lower,
as to afford a personal link between the two, which no less sympathetic
or more official intermediary could supply. Each of the departments I
have named is manned by its own staff of officers and men, who are all
trained to carry out definite functions with cheerfulness, confidence
and goodwill. On the _Renown_ the same healthy spirit was to be found in
every one aboard, from the Flag-Lieutenant down to the humblest stoker.
It is an early inoculation of Osborne and Exmouth and apparently expands
in the system with promotion.
At general divisions on Sundays, the entire ship's company assembled for
inspection on the decks, each officer at the head of his respective
contingent. A finer sight than these divisions it would be impossible to
find, the men well-set-up, and bearing decorations won in every naval
engagement during the war, from Zeebrugge to the Falkland Islands, and
from the Dardanelles to Jutland, wearing too in many cases the red
triple stripe upon the sleeve which tells of fifteen years of good
service under the White Ensign.
A battle-cruiser has many aspects. It is a fortress with parade grounds
and cricket pitches, a monastery with divagations in port, a school of
many things besides arithmetic, and a community that could teach social
law to Mr. Hyndman. It is above all from this point of view the home,
the castle and the club of the officers and men who inhabit it, and the
centre of these significances is the ward-room. The _Renown's_ had an
ante-room which enshrined the files, not greatly disturbed, of a few
newspapers, and was a most comfortable smoking-room, but it was about
the tables and chairs, the Mess President's mallet and the unwearied
piano of the ward-room itself that the hoariest traditions of His
Majesty's Navy most conspicuously flourished and the atmospheric essence
of the Senior Service most happily clung.
There is a variety of the game of Patience played with cards called
"Knock." It was plainly invented, in a moment of drowsy leave, by a
sub-lieutenant to whom had arrived the felicity of ordering, by a stroke
upon the table, Commander X or Lieutenant-Commander Y to "pass the wine"
in penalty for having read an urgent signal from the bridge and omitted
to excuse himself to him, the said Sub-Lieutenant, and Mess President
for the week, though youngest officer present. Various were the offences
thus visited across the field of the repast, which had a goal at each
end, kept, so to speak, by the Chaplain, with his grace before and after
meat. In that consecrated interval no lady's name may be pronounced, and
nothing of any sort may be perused. The Spell with which the ward-room
guards its daily history at once paralyses the pen. There is really no
way of learning much about these things except by entering the Navy or
persuading a battle-cruiser to give you a berth in her, opportunities
which occur but seldom to any of us. The relaxations of that genial and
athletic place form a tempting theme, but it is better for the
publishers that a modest number of these volumes should reach the
libraries than that a whole edition should be sunk at sea.
All this announced and admitted however, this was the voyage to
Australasia of H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, and the _Renown_, at least in
the public eye, must be subordinated to her duty.
The Prince was to be met quite often, going about the ship, like anybody
else, with always an unaffected word and pleasant smile for those he ran
up against. He did a good deal of reading and other work in his
state-room in the morning, but in the afternoon he often shared in the
recreations of the officers, playing squash racquets in a small court
that had been rigged up upon the superstructure, shooting at clay discs
thrown out from the ship's side by means of a spring trap, or running
and doing Swedish exercises on the poop. H.R.H. ordinarily messed with
the Captain and the members of the Royal Staff, in the cuddy, which had
been enlarged and pleasantly decorated in ivory and green for the
purpose; but he was also an honorary member of the ward-room and
gun-room messes and sometimes dined with one or other of them. On other
nights he often had officers or passengers to dine with himself and his
staff, in the simplest and most informal way, his guests coming away
with the pleasantest impressions of unpretentious good fellowship and
cheery company. On these occasions the Prince himself proposed the
health of the King, and about this ceremony, simply and modestly as it
was observed, hung an odd little Imperial thrill. Republics are worthy
forms of Government, but they impose upon no man the duty of toasting
his own father. It was a gesture that somehow placed the youthful host
momentarily apart--one imagines his having to reconquer the effect of it
as often as he makes it.
The Prince is keen upon naval affairs and soon knew the ship from one
end to the other. He often accompanied the Captain on inspections and
took a hand in all sorts of duties, down to those of the oil furnaces.
He sampled the men's food, tasted their grog and would often have a
cheery chat with them. There was no attempt to sequester the Chief
Passenger. He shared and contributed to the life of the ship.
II
BARBADOS
Gloom was cast over the _Renown_, the day before reaching Barbados, by
the falling overboard, in rough weather, of a fine young gunner of
marines, who was sitting on the taffrail gaily talking to his mates when
a roll came that sent him into the sea. The poor fellow had hardly
stopped falling when patent life-buoys, which sent out white clouds of
smoke, easily visible in the bright afternoon sunshine, were dropped.
The big ship swung round. The man was swimming, when lost to view
amongst white-topped waves. A boat was smartly lowered, and within
fifteen minutes of the cry "Man overboard," the rowers had reached the
buoys and were carefully searching the precise spot where the speck
which had been one of our company had disappeared. The Prince was much
concerned at the accident, and came upon deck the moment he heard of it.
But our hearts grew heavy as the minutes went by and the search proved
vain. It had eventually to be recognized that the unfortunate man had
sunk before reaching the life-buoys, close as they had been dropped to
him in the water. A funeral service was afterwards held on the
forecastle, the entire ship's company and all the officers attending to
pay respect to the memory of their shipmate. The Prince also sent a
personal message by wireless to the relations of the deceased. It was
one of those accidents that no amount of care can entirely prevent, upon
the necessarily low, and but slightly fenced decks of a modern
battle-cruiser in a heavy sea.
The following evening the _Renown_ arrived off Barbados. The
light-cruiser _Calcutta_, flagship of the West Indian squadron, met her
at sea and escorted her in to the anchorage half a mile from shore. A
dozen sailing barques, mostly American, also three or four steamers of
various nationalities, were lying at anchor, all of them decked with
bunting in honour of the Royal visit. The usual salutes were fired and
formal exchange of calls between the Prince and Sir Charles O'Brien,
Governor of the island, and Admiral Everett, commanding the West Indian
station, took place.
It was the first pause for the purpose of the tour, the first official
touch. The feeling of function, of standing at attention, which was soon
to clothe the enterprise as with a garment, fell upon all concerned. The
silk hat for the first time bobbed in the visiting steam-launch, and the
address came out of the breast pocket of the municipal morning coat.
Bridgetown, the capital of Barbados, as seen from the _Renown_ through
the soft warm muggy atmosphere of the end of March, was a tumbled mass
of white and red buildings embowered in emerald foliage, and fringed by
the masts of anchored sailing vessels, themselves reflected in the
broken amethyst of the open roadstead. The narrow streets had been
decorated by the wives and daughters of the residents, headed by Lady
Carter, wife of a late governor of the island, who had expended an
immense amount of labour upon the work. Gigantic sago-palm leaves had
grown into royal emblems wherein the fronds took the place of feathers.
The Broad Street of the city might have been a Cantonese bazaar, so
thick was it with coloured banners. Nelson's statue, in the local
Trafalgar Square, looked out of a mass of brilliant floral designs. An
imposing triumphal arch of flowers had also been erected. Even the tiny
wooden huts of the negroes, on the outskirts, carried paper decorations
that must have cost much labour to make. A well-set-up company of
volunteers furnished a guard-of-honour at the landing. The members of
the Barbados House of Assembly, headed by the Governor in white
political uniform, received the Prince. Bands and salutes added to the
formality of the occasion. Complimentary addresses were presented in the
old Assembly House, where the Prince shook hands with a remarkably long
line of returned military and naval officers and men, for Barbados sent
an extraordinary large proportion of her sons to the war.
A fleet of motor-cars then turned up and the Prince was taken for a
drive through the island. The procession was headed by that veteran
planter and member of Assembly, Mr. Graham Yearwood, who seemed to have
at his finger-ends every local romance of the past three hundred years,
from the story of the "Rendezvous" on the coast, where loyalist planters
repelled the onslaught of Cromwellian squadrons, to that of a certain
cavernous gully which we also saw, where, for long months, was hidden
the body of a swashbuckling moss-trooper slain in single combat by a
Barbadian planter. The Prince was also conducted over the buzzing
machinery of an immense, up-to-date sugar-factory, fitted with the
latest appliances, and learnt something of the vicissitudes of the sugar
industry, an enterprise which was doggedly operated through years of low
prices, bad crops, and hurricanes, and only narrowly saved from complete
bankruptcy by a grant obtained from the British Parliament by Mr. Joseph
Chamberlain. At the time of the Royal visit, it was in a state of
abounding prosperity with prices at twelve times their pre-war level.
Even with the year's by no means favourable season the current crop was
valued at eight times the average of five years previously, which meant
ease and comfort to all connected with this premier industry of the
island.
The whole of the city portion of the route was lined--in places ten
deep--with cheering, laughing, bowing coloured people and their women
and piccaninnies; the folk of the cane fields and factories. In the
country portion of the route, negroes rushed to the roadside from their
work in the fields the moment the Royal car appeared in sight. "God
bless you!" they cried to the Prince. "Come! Come! Lookee here, he too
sweet boy!" "God bless my old eyes that have seen him," mingled with
laughter and the clapping of hands, while old men bowed low, with
dignified, wide-armed, slow gesticulation, and women and girls,
sometimes smartly got-up with head-kerchiefs made of Union Jacks, and
always with strong, free hip-gait, and the widest of white-toothed
smiles, came running to drop a curtsy or bend in salute. It was real
contagious joy and excitement, like the overflowing froth of a bottle of
Guinness, and as for the noise only a Jazz Band could describe it.
The road was sometimes crowded with four-wheeled mule-drawn carts,
piled high with fresh-cut, yellow sugar-cane, on its way to the presses,
each stem the thickness of a rolling-pin and the length of a
cavalryman's lance, for the harvesting was in full swing. The negroes
take the crop, which looks much like sorghum or Indian corn, with
cutlasses, primitive work done by primitive people. The luscious growth
needs a good deal of fertilizing and care the year round, and
generations of these simple folk have thriven upon it since the middle
of the seventeenth century. Seventy-four thousand acres of it there are
and probably a hundred thousand negroes producing it, all, so far as we
could observe, delighted to see the Prince of Wales.
The road wound sometimes through pillared aisles of stately sago-palms,
past dense groves of green mahogany and bread-fruit trees or brilliantly
red flowering devil-trees, hibiscus, and silk-cotton. Sometimes one saw
brown heaps of sweet potatoes, as large as turnips, just dug from the
earth. The procession climbed through open fields of uncut sugar-cane
and sorghum, getting a fine view of rolling cultivation, bordered with
blue sea and white surf-swept beach. Ancient windmills swung black,
droning sails on the hill-tops. Tall brick chimneys told of
long-established crushing mills close to the cane fields. Cheerful
villages of flimsy wooden shacks and solid stone houses followed one
another in quick succession, each with its inhabitants lined up in
holiday clothes to cheer. Again and again the Prince alighted to inspect
boy-scouts, girl-guides, and war-workers, or to say a pleasant word to
assemblies of school-children. One gathering proved a community of
"Red-legs," descendants, now of mixed race, of Scotch and Irish prisoners
of war and "unruly men" exiled and sold for seven years as white
servants to the colony in 1653. It was easy to pick out in the
white-clad crowd individuals with negro features and pale Celtic skins.
Later in the day, the Prince attended a formal state dinner, and evoked
a storm of applause by contradicting emphatically a rumour, which had
been causing a good deal of anxiety in the island, to the effect that
there was a possibility of some of the West Indies being disposed of to
America. "I need hardly say," said His Royal Highness, downrightly,
"that the King's subjects are not for sale to other governments. Their
destiny, as free men, is in their own hands. Your future is for you
yourselves to shape, and I am sure Barbados will never waver in its
loyalty, three centuries old, to the British Crown."
It would thus appear that Cromwell's experiment is not likely to be
developed by the present government. The assurance was noteworthy as the
first of the pleasant and telling things the Prince had to say during
his progress, opportunities which he never missed and which, in the
aggregate, enhanced so greatly the success of his mission.
III
PANAMA
At dawn, in hot, soft, hazy weather, the _Renown_, followed by the
_Calcutta_, left the blue, transparent waters of the Caribbean Sea and
entered the green, muddy channel, fringed with dense, verdant forest,
which is the beginning of the Panama Canal. Three aeroplanes, each
bearing the stripes of the American Air Service, droned overhead in
noisy welcome. Resonant concussions and white, fleecy puffs of smoke
amidst low wharves and jetties where Colon lay in the forest, spread a
Royal salute upon the vibrating air. Music arose upon the _Renown_,
while staff-officers arrayed themselves in gold-lace and helmets, ready
to receive the Prince's guests. Launches arrived at the ship bringing
the British Minister to Panama, Mr. Percy Bennett, accompanied by
Captain Blake and Major-General Bethell, respectively naval and military
attaches at the British Embassy at Washington. An hour's quiet steaming,
thereafter, brought us to the giant Gatun locks, which stand in three
black tiers of steel, the gates rising, one above another, in a massive
setting of grey, rounded concrete, a severing gash in the high, green
hill which is the Gatun dam. Here, Senor Lefevre, President of the
Panama Republic, Admiral Johnston and Colonel Kennedy, commanding the
American naval and military forces in the Panama Zone, also Engineer
Colonel Harding, Governor of the Canal, and Monsieur Simonin, French
Charge d'Affairs, came on board.
The formality attending these official arrivals, so often to be repeated
throughout the tour, was practically always the same. The visitor who
came up the gangway from the dock or the launch, as the case might be,
saluted the quarter-deck--a survival this from the days when it bore a
crucifix--and was saluted in turn by the Officer of the Watch, who, with
his telescope tucked under his arm, conveyed the stranger past the row
of marines drawn up at attention to the Captain and the Equerry in
waiting, who brought him up the starboard companion to the mezzanine
deck. Here he would be received by the Prince attended by his Staff. The
visit seldom exceeded twenty minutes. When H.R.H. left the ship for the
shore the Captain awaited him on the quarter-deck and conducted him past
the marines presenting arms to the gangway. On these occasions the
junior members of the party were the first to step off, finishing with
the Admiral and last of all the Prince, both Admiral and Prince being
"piped over the side" to the shrill music of the bos'n's whistle. There
was as little variation about the arrival on shore. Always the
guard-of-honour, the band, the stunting aeroplanes, always six bars of
"God Save the King" and the pause at attention, always the hand-shaking
with the officer commanding the guard-of-honour, the inspection, and so
to the business and pleasure of the visit.
[Illustration: PANAMA CANAL: A SHARP CORNER]
[Illustration: SURF-BOARDING AT HONOLULU]
On this occasion the guard of American soldiers in white uniforms and
the familiar wide-brimmed hats was drawn up upon the lawn beside the
topmost lock. Thence, past some thousands of prosperous-looking
employees of the Canal, and their families, who had turned out to see
the reception, the Prince was taken to the Control House, whence the
whole of the operations of the locks are regulated, from the
manipulating of the little, black, towing mule-engines, which ran
busily, like scarabaeid beetles, up and down rails set in concrete
slopes on the top of the lock walls, to the opening and closing of the
seventy-foot high gates, and the letting in and letting out of the green
sluggish water.
From the veranda of the Control House we got our first striking
impression of the dramatic achievement of the Canal. We were on the
level of the wide island dotted expanse of the Gatun lake. The
enormous _Renown_ and the tiny _Calcutta_ lay, side by side, in
thousand-feet-long pools, at our feet, in a turmoil of waves of rushing
water, out of which, from time to time, some frightened fish would leap,
a silver gleam that disappeared before one had made out its shape or
kind. The great design was in action before our eyes. The locks opened
and closed with extraordinary speed and almost noiseless efficiency, and
by the time the Prince had returned from inspecting the monster spillway
and power-house, to which he was carried in a tiny train that was in
readiness alongside the locks when we arrived, the _Calcutta_ was
already entering the lake, while the _Renown_ had surmounted the locks
and was only waiting to take on the Royal party before following in her
wake.
The route thereafter lay at first through the green water of the lake,
past islands covered with densest jungle. About the middle of the lake,
we passed masses of bare tree-trunks, standing erect in the water, on
either side of the broad track that is kept clear for the passage of
ships. These trees are what remain of a forest that covered the bottom
of the valley before the building of the dam which converted it into a
lake. The trunks, though standing in some seven fathoms of water, still
keep their branches and project many feet above the surface; and have to
be avoided by passing ships. This dismal avenue has kept its place for
ten years. It must have been green once. Like a forest after a great
burning it stands in skeleton and carries no leaf now, a curious
reminder that water can be as pitiless as fire.
In the afternoon we entered the Culebra cut. Here man has been at grips
with nature in her least amiable mood. The channel becomes a winding
gorge through steep, rugged crags and rounded hills. The stupendous
cutting shows treacherous alternating layers of red gravel, yellow sand,
brown crumpled rock, and soft, slippery blue clay. A number of mammoth
floating steam dredgers were here at work, a fresh slip having occurred
a few days previously. Progress, therefore, had to be of the slowest. A
climax was reached near the end of the cutting, where, at a sharp curve
in the channel, a whole hillside, half a mile each way, had commenced to
move, the debris extending right into the canal, which was also impeded
by a small island, apparently squeezed up from the bottom by the
terrific pressure of the slipping hill. The place looked almost
impossible, the great length of the _Renown_ making the manoeuvring of
her in what remained of the channel one of the trickiest pieces of
navigation imaginable. Naval officers are not easily put off, however,
and by the most delicate handling, the vessel ultimately crawled past
the obstruction. The cheerful little red-roofed township of Pedro Miguel
was reached soon afterwards. Here the entire population had turned out
to see the Prince, the girls in brilliant costumes, amongst which one
might sometimes see the black mantilla of Spain; the men in anything,
from working overalls and slouch hats, to the leisured fashions of New
York. At Pedro Miguel began the slow process of descending to the level
of the Pacific. The first lock dropped us some thirty feet into the
picturesque lake of Miraflores, surrounded by rounded grass-grown hills,
emerald in the setting sun. Two more locks followed at the end of the
lake, and we entered a stretch of water at ocean level, which took us to
the docks at Balboa, upon the Pacific, close to the city of Panama.
[Illustration: EXCITEMENT GROWS IN AUCKLAND HARBOUR]
[Illustration: NEW ZEALAND: THE PRIME MINISTER TAKES CHARGE]
At Panama the Prince had the most friendly and hospitable reception,
banquets and balls succeeding one another on shore, while on the
_Renown_ several ceremonies took place, including the receiving and
replying to addresses from British, West Indian and East Indian
residents. Some of the local cordiality was quaintly worded.
"In frantic supplication we fling ourselves at the feet of Almighty God
to shower His blessings upon Your Highness." More, it may be imagined,
could not be done. "If we be allowed another paragraph may we then be
permitted, in this final gasp, to express our desire that Your Royal
Highness will greatly enjoy your short visit to this port." It is
understood that the desire of the permitted paragraph and the final gasp
was not denied.
Another picturesque ceremony was when the Prince drove in procession to
pay a formal visit to the President of Panama. The motor-cars first
traversed the wide American zone of the Canal region, speeding over
smooth, asphalt roads, past well-built verandahed houses, with white
walls and dark-coloured jutting roofs, the windows and doors meshed with
fine wire-gauze, an arrangement which gives them the appearance of
prosperous meat-safes. These houses are part of the wonderful sanitary
arrangements which have turned Panama, from being a yellow-fever camp,
into one of the most healthy regions in the world. They are inhabited by
the engineering, traffic and administrative staffs, and the police and
military establishments of the Canal zone. They stand in spacious
gardens with beautifully-kept lawns and flower-borders, and are supplied
with up-to-date electric-light and fans, good drinking-water, and
perfect installations of sewers. There are also carefully thought out
clubs and institutes, which supply the Canal employees with
entertainment for their spare hours, alcoholic liquor alone excepted,
for the zone is strictly "dry."
Smart American sentries saluted at the barbed wire boundary, whence the
route wound past conical hills which may well have been the range that
gave to Drake the first white man's view of the Pacific Ocean.
Thereafter the procession plunged into the narrow streets of Panama
city, which were lined with cheering, laughing crowds of gaily dressed
negroes, Mexicans and Spaniards. Bunting fluttered from every window in
the high tiered houses. An escort of picturesque mounted police, with
rough peaked saddles and undocked horses, closed in on either side.
Immense, decorated barouches, drawn by fine pairs of Mexican horses,
were substituted for the Canal zone motor-cars, and the procession
moved on in state, the Prince alighting, _en route_, to inspect a fine
body of about a hundred returned soldiers of the West Indian Regiment
who had assembled in his honour.
The President and his entire council, in black frock-coats and shining
top-hats, welcomed the party upon the steps of the Presidential House, a
pleasant residence, with garden quadrangle, overlooking the sunny
harbour. The Prince was conducted upstairs to a large reception-room,
hung with yellowing paintings of previous Presidents, where compliments
were exchanged and refreshments offered. Later in the day an official
dinner was given, at which the President proposed the Royal health in
flowing Spanish, mentioning the large number of residents, in the chief
cities of Panama, who are British subjects from the West Indian islands,
and emphasizing the gratitude felt by all Panamanians towards Great
Britain for having taken up the cause of the smaller nations in the
World War. The reference filled several eyes in the company with
conscious rectitude, and they were not all British.
IV
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In passing the Culebra Cut landslide, in the Panama Canal, one of the
propellers of the _Renown_ touched a submerged rock which had escaped
the notice of the surveyors. When Balboa harbour was reached the ship's
divers went down to see what the damage amounted to; and as poking about
the cruiser's bottom, thirty-three feet below the surface, in muddy
water infested with sharks, is, to say the least, an unpleasant task, it
was characteristic of the ship that one of the first to don diving-dress
and go over the side was the Engineer-Commander himself. The result was
to ascertain that one of the blades of one of the propellers had had a
small piece broken off, but that the damage was so slight that it would
not be necessary to dock the vessel for repair.
A start was therefore made for San Diego, our next port of call. The
course skirted the mountainous coast of Mexico, which showed mistily on
the starboard horizon. The water was of the smoothest and clearest, and
of tint so blue as to be almost azure. The temperature was tropical, and
we found surprising abundance of sea-life. Yellow turtles, as big as
footballs, with their little pointed heads stuck out to watch us,
floated by in scores. Schools of glistening porpoises leapt in the sun
besides a couple of big, slow-moving, log-like blackfish. You can travel
from London to Bombay and see hardly a creature, but here the sea
teemed. Birds too were plentiful--quantities of duck, white, wheeling
gulls, and black, slender, frigate-birds that sailed past like kites.
A few days later, in an amethyst sea, off the green slopes of Loma
point, the _Renown_ cast anchor. The houses and towers of San Diego,
seven miles off, across the Harbour of the Sun, glistened pearl-like in
soft morning light, above the golden setting of the Coronada sand. Out
at sea, at dawn that day, six grey, business-like American destroyers
had met the _Renown_ and escorted her in, a score of United States
flying-boats and aeroplanes hovering in well-kept formations overhead.
At the mouth of the harbour was lying that fine battleship the _New
Mexico_, flagship of the United States Pacific Squadron, which fired a
welcoming salute. After the anchor was down, Admiral Williams, acting
Naval Commander-in-Chief in the Pacific, who flew his flag on the _New
Mexico_, visited the Prince. Mayor Wild, of San Diego, and other local
residents also arrived from the shore to pay their respects.
The morning was taken up with the receiving and returning of these
visits. In the afternoon the Prince landed at the municipal pier in the
heart of the city. Here he found Governor Stephens, of California, at
the head of a large deputation, waiting to welcome him. Every avenue to
the wharf was blocked with motor-cars. Well-dressed crowds pressed upon
the ropes that fenced in a central space reserved for British veterans,
to whom had been given the place of particular honour in the town's
reception of its visitor. The veterans were some hundred and fifty
strong, and gave the Prince the heartiest of cheers. They proved to be
residents of California, about half of them being from San Diego itself.
They had all served in the forces of the British Empire in the Great
War. At their head was General Carruthers, lately Chief-of-the-Staff
with the Australian Expeditionary Force in France. It was a wonderful
spectacle of colour and cheerfulness, as the Prince went down the line,
shaking hands with his old comrades in the field, while mites in
pinafores pushed to the front to present him with bouquets, and pretty
girls in Highland costume sang "God save the King." The crowd broke
through the barriers, before the motor-cars, provided to convey the
party to the Stadium, had been reached, but everybody was in the
friendliest of humours, and did their utmost individually to make space
for the procession to start. The first three or four cars, containing
the Prince, the Governor, the Mayor, and a few of the Staff, eventually
got through. The rest extricated themselves gradually from the press of
people and vehicles, and made their way by more or less devious routes,
the road marked out for the procession having by this time become so
crowded as to be almost impassable. The procession reformed at the
Stadium, a mile or so distant. On the way, prosperous suburbs of
extraordinary attractiveness were passed, the houses often of
Spanish-colonial type, with deep verandas set in spacious gardens and
well-kept lawns, with masses of roses, geraniums, hibiscus, and purple
salt-grass in full bloom. The ground here was high, and one looked down
upon the city, with palm-trees in the foreground, and the harbour and
its shipping in the middle distance, while on the horizon were piled the
rugged mountains of southern California, pink in the evening light.
The Stadium proved to be a massive open-air amphitheatre of
cream-coloured stone, capable of seating fifty thousand spectators, of
whom some ten thousand were present. Here complimentary addresses were
presented and replied to, the gathering applauding, with equal energy,
the heart-to-heart statement of Mayor Wild that the Prince was a
"regular fellow," and the impressive periods of Governor Stephens, who
dwelt upon the importance of the Royal visit as strengthening the
connexion between the two great branches of the Anglo-Saxon race.
Another feature of the occasion was the playing of a gigantic open-air
organ, the largest of its kind in the world. The organist sat by the
roadside and the pipes of his instrument pointed unprotected to the sky.
An official dinner and a ball followed later in the day at the big hotel
on Coronada Beach. Innumerable motor and other parties had meanwhile
been organized by individual residents, every one of the thirteen
hundred sailors and marines on the _Renown_ who could in any way be
spared from duty, being given a delightful outing and the kindest and
most hospitable of entertainment. In this way numbers of them were able
to see something of the wonderful country around San Diego, with its
incomparable mountains and valleys, and its hundreds of square miles of
fertile peach-orchards, just then one gorgeous mass of coral blossom.
San Diego, with its famous bathing beach, its clear air, dry balmy
climate, and seventy thousand prosperous white inhabitants, thus took to
its generous western heart not alone the Prince himself, but also every
British soul aboard the ship by which he travelled. A year before, the
_Renown_ had become acquainted, in New York, with American kindness and
hospitality which seemed, at the time, to be impossible to equal. The
ship now had experience, on the other side of the American continent, of
a similar reception, in every way as warm and spontaneous, accorded too
by people as representative of the western states of the Union as New
York is of the eastern. This inclusion of the battle-cruiser's men was
one of the pleasantest features at almost every port of call upon the
voyage, but it was nowhere more general or more genial than in this
American city of the Far South.
V
HONOLULU
In warm, moist atmosphere, and the tropical light that glares beneath a
cloudy sky, the _Renown_ dropped anchor in the open roadstead off the
rocky coast of Honolulu. Around the ship were depths of clear,
iridescent blue, with streaks of brilliant green where the water
shallowed inshore. Further on, a line of low, white breakers bounded a
green patchwork of undulating cultivation which sloped upwards, with
occasional ploughed fields of red, volcanic soil, towards a cloud-topped
horizon of mountains in the interior of the island. Immediately
overhead, showing black against the clouds, half-a-dozen flying boats
and aeroplanes rattled a cheery American welcome. The smoke of the
light-cruiser and dozen destroyers which had met the _Renown_ at sea and
escorted her to anchorage, drifted in the heavy air, blurring the cranes
and derricks of the inner harbour.
Salutes banged off. Flags dipped and rose. Words of command rang through
the battle-cruiser. A guard-of-honour of marines, lined up in white
uniforms on the quarter-deck, came with a clank to attention. The notes
of the United States National Anthem floated out, as the American
Governor and other local authorities came aboard to pay visits of
ceremony to the Prince. It was our second glimpse of Imperial America.
It is just twenty-two years since the United States, after some
preliminary coquetting with Queen Liliuokalani, took up this white man's
burden in the Pacific under the style of a Territory; and her guests,
more familiar with the conception, looked with interest at the fringe of
the experiment. It seemed immensely prosperous and contented. Its
obvious aspects were those of a principal base of America's naval power
and the bourn of an endless tide of tourists, for whom alone the place
might exist with profit. These naturally exposed a social life almost
exclusively American. Hotels, newspapers, warehouses, factories, and
stores were managed by Americans. Only on the beach among the bobbing
craft of the breakers were the island originals conspicuous, at home in
an element they love. Elsewhere they seemed to form a brown undercurrent
of the Hawaiian world, content, in their Polynesian way, with a little
so it was easily come by. They are still, one gathers, much governed and
influenced by the missionaries to whom they owe their Christian faith.
Like the North American Indians they are fast dying out. Like the
Burmese they are content to be supplanted in their own labour market by
others--Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, and Filipinos. Doubtless there
are Hawaiian boys at American Universities, Hawaiian professional men,
Hawaiian merchant princes, cultivated Hawaiians who read Bergson and
Bernard Shaw and are the product of a generation of progress; but our
opportunity was too brief to find them. It is hardly surprising that the
Hawaiian was not greatly in evidence, when one was told that there are
but 22,000 of pure race, against 110,000 Japanese for example, 31,000
Americans and British and 23,000 Chinese, with a considerable Filipino
element, and more than a flavouring of Spanish.
On a large open space upon the wharf, surrounded by the substantial
stone buildings of a prosperous modern harbour, the Prince landed to
receive his welcome to the island. On one side of the square was an
up-to-date guard-of-honour of United States infantry at attention, every
button gleaming, every uniform stitch identical, with that felicity of
neatness so characteristic of American kit, as His Royal Highness shook
hands with its commanding officer, and walked down the line. On the
other side was a motley gathering of his own fellow-countrymen and
women, residents of the island, who had served with the British Forces
during the war, and had now gathered, in varying costumes much mingled
with khaki bearing many a worn decoration, to do honour to their King's
eldest son, whom they cheered lustily. On the third side of the square
the indigenous element was represented by pleasant, brown-faced young
men in blue uniforms of modern cut, over which they wore brilliant red
and yellow tippets of priceless "Oo" and "Iiwi" feathers, handed down
from days gone by, when they were insignia of Hawaiian royalty. Their
function, on behalf of the remaining representatives of the ancient
dynasty, was to garland the British Prince with "lais," ropes of
close-strung pink carnations and scarlet ilima flowers, bringers of
good-luck, and to present him with a polished brown calibash, the size
of a foot-bath, adze-hewn, a hundred years ago, from hard-wood felled in
the interior, and now filled with a luscious assortment of bananas,
mangoes, loquats, paw-paws, water-lemons, pineapples, bread-fruit, and
crimson mountain-apples, symbols which made him free of the good things
of the island.
Subsequently the Prince returned the official visits paid to him, and
was introduced to various local institutions. His reception by the
American Governor was in the spacious, many-windowed hall of the Iolani
palace, where an elected assembly of Hawaiian representatives now
prosaically meets in what were once such picturesque places of authority
as the king's bed-chamber and the queen's boudoir. On the walls a number
of mellowing oil-portraits, depicting stout, brown, benevolent monarchs,
uncomfortable but doubtless impressive in the tight fashions of the
Victorian age, mutely testified to the splendours of the past. They
seemed to look down at the function with mingled sorrow and superiority,
as those who could have given an entertainment committee points on such
an occasion as this.