VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD.
Leaving school I entered the office of Salisbury, Turner and Earle, one
of the oldest and leading brokerage houses in the town. The partners
were Mr. Alderman John H. Turner (remarkable for the smallness of his
stature), Mr. Horace Turner, and Mr. Henry Grey. My senior apprentice
was the late Colonel Morrison. I had not been very long in this office
when I contracted a very severe cold, the result of being out all night
on Ben Lomond. I had gone up with my father and a party of friends to
see the sunset; on the way down I lost my way, and finding myself with
darkness coming on, in very boggy land, I sat down on a rock to await
daylight. Heavy rain fell and I was soaked through, which resulted in a
cold that took such a strong hold of me that the doctor ordered me a sea
voyage, and on the 20th November, 1857, I set sail on board the clipper
ship "Red Jacket," for Melbourne. The gold fever was at its height, and
the passenger trade with Australia was very active. Our ship was crowded
with passengers; she was the crack clipper of the day, and carried a
double crew, that she might be enabled to carry sail until the last
moment. We had a very pleasant passage and beat the record, making Port
Phillip Heads in sixty-three days.
I visited the gold fields at Ballarat, making the journey from Geelong
by stage-coach, drawn by six horses, the roads being mere tracks cut
through the bush. I descended several of the mines; at this time the
alluvial deposits had been worked out, and most of the mines were being
worked at a considerable depth. At Melbourne I stayed with Mr.
Strickland, at a charming villa on the banks of the Yarra-Yarra. Leaving
Melbourne, I took a steamer for Sydney, where my father had many
business friends, and had a very good time yachting in the bay and
riding up country. I managed to lose myself in the bush, and for a whole
day was a solitary wanderer, not knowing where I was. It was a period of
strange sensations and of much anxiety. Eventually, late in the evening
I came across a shepherd, who gave me the best of his simple fare and
guided me to the nearest village.
From Australia I sailed in a small barque, the "Queen of the Avon," for
Valparaiso; she was only 360 tons register, and I was the only
passenger.
The voyage across to Valparaiso was eventful. We had bad weather
throughout, and a heavy cyclone which did us great damage about the
decks. We were hove to for two days with a tarpaulin in the mizzen
rigging. We sailed right through the storm centre, where we had no wind,
but a terrific and very confused sea, and here we saw hundreds of
sea-birds of all kinds. At Valparaiso we obtained a charter to load
cocoa at Guayaquil. We had a lovely cruise up the coast, and the sail up
the river to Guayaquil was heavenly; we had the panorama of the Andes on
our right, with the richly verdured island of Puna on the other hand;
flocks of flamingoes were wading in the shallow sea channels, and
pelicans were busy fishing along the margins of the sandbanks. At
Guayaquil we had some good crocodile shooting, not the easiest game to
bag. These reptiles had to be stalked in the most approved fashion;
although they lay seemingly basking and asleep in the sun, with their
great mouths wide open, their ears were very much on the alert, and it
was most difficult to come within shot. We succeeded better from a boat
than from the land, for by allowing the boat to drift with the tide we
were able to get within easy shot without being heard.
I visited Bodegas and some of the Indian villages at the foot of the
Andes. The whole country was very interesting, and very rich in tropical
birds and flowers. There were too many snakes to make travelling quite
comfortable, but in time we found they all did their best to get away
from us, and we gained more confidence.
I had a little adventure in Guayaquil which might have been very
unpleasant. There was a revolution, and the government troops had only
just regained possession of the city; I had the misfortune to walk
unwittingly through a barricade, which consisted of some half-dozen
ragged black soldiers, who quite failed to suggest to me a military
outpost. I was at once arrested and taken to the jail. Here I remained
for some hours surrounded by the most horrible looking ruffians, and was
in mortal dread of the time when I should be locked up with them in one
of the foul dens which led off the court-yard. I was fortunately set
free through the kind intervention of an American who had been a witness
of my capture and incarceration.
At Guayaquil we loaded a cargo of cocoa and sailed for Falmouth for
orders. We arrived off this port in November, 1859, after an uneventful
voyage of 110 days. We tacked the ship off the Manacle Rocks, at the
entrance to the harbour; the wind flew round to the east, and we were
driven out again into the chops of the channel; it was twenty-four days
before we again saw Falmouth. We fought our way against a succession of
easterly gales, sometimes driven out as far west as the Fastnet. The
fleet of ships kept out by the long continued easterly winds was very
large, and the Admiralty was obliged to dispatch relief ships with
stores for their succour.
No one who has not experienced an easterly gale in the Channel can form
any idea of the toil of a constant fight against a succession of heavy
gales, cold and bleak with sleet and snow. Sometimes the wind would
decrease and we were able to make some headway, and perhaps work our
way within sight of the Scilly Islands, raising our hopes of an early
arrival at our port, then another gale would spring up and drive us back
again to the west of Ireland, and the same thing was repeated over and
over again. The Channel was full of ships detained by adverse gales, and
the home markets were disorganised by the lack of supplies of raw
produce. All this is now a thing of the past, steamers are independent
of head winds, and winter easterly gales no longer strike terror into
the hearts of shipowners and merchants.
Whilst on this voyage, to relieve the monotony of the daily routine of
sea life, I taught myself navigation, took my trick at the wheel, and
had my place aloft when reefing next to the weather earing, where I
worked with an old man-of-war's man named Amos. Amos was a noble
specimen of the old-fashioned British sailor. He was the king of the
fo'castle, and while he was on hand no swearing or bad language was
heard. The knowledge I then obtained of navigation and seamanship has
been most valuable to me through life. It was a great opportunity, which
I was wise enough to avail myself of. During the whole time I was on
board this ship--nearly eight months--I never missed taking my trick at
the wheel, or going aloft to reef. I well remember laying out on the
fore yardarm, off Cape Horn, for two hours, while we got a close reef
tied. We had to take up belaying pins to knock the frozen snow and ice
off the sail before we could do anything, and the ship was labouring so
heavily in the seaway that our task was most difficult. In navigation I
became so proficient that I could work lunars with ease, and after the
passage home of 110 days without seeing land I placed the position of
the ship within three miles of her true position, near the Wolf Rock,
Land's End, the old captain being ten to twelve miles out in his
longitude. I remember feeling very proud of my good landfall. I told the
old skipper that I thought we should see land at noon. He smiled and
replied that we should not make it before three o'clock. I went aloft on
to the fore yard-arm at one o'clock, and had not been there many minutes
when I shouted "Land Ho!" I saw the sea breaking over the Wolf Rock.