OUT ON THE PACIFIC.
So pleasant was my visit in the city of the Golden Gate that
it was with some regret that I left San Francisco and took the
electric-lighted steamship Columbia for Portland. It was certainly
very fortunate for me while there to make those side excursions
to Monterey, to the Geysers, and to other places, and yet have the
pleasure each time of returning to a good home, while so many Eastern
people were cast upon the friendless hotels. This pleasant refuge was
at the residence of Mr. A. B. Crosby, formerly of Rockville, Conn.,
into whose family I was most cordially received, and will always be
remembered as a bright spot in my wanderings.
The excitement of encampment week and the excursions taken prevented
my making the acquaintance of many wheelmen, but I found Mr. Cook,
who took such an unfortunate fall at the Hartford races last year,
Chief Consul Welch, Mr. George H. Adams, and several others, all
gentlemen, as, it is almost needless to say, is the status of the
great majority of wheelmen everywhere. There were a great many New
England people among the five hundred or more passengers aboard
the steamer, but the only Connecticut people I found were from
New Haven and Birmingham. Still we were quite a distinguished
company. The large frame, the bald head, and smiling face of
ex-Commander-in-chief Burdette, the empty sleeve and gray head of
the newly-elected Commander-in-chief Fairchild, Governor Robie of
Maine, Professor Williams of Brown University, my tutor, in the sense
that his delightful account of his European trip first set me wild
to be a bicycle traveler there, and many other intelligent ladies
and gentlemen helped to form a party that cheered and happily waved
their handkerchiefs as the iron steamer left the wharf, turned about,
and passing through a fleet of ferry-boats in the harbor, glided out
through the Golden Gate, and into a bank of fog and a gale of cold
raw wind.
How different from what I anticipated. When climbing up to the Big
Trees and into the Yosemite, through the hot sand, the suffocating
dust, and under a blazing sun, how I looked forward to this ride on
the Pacific. In place of the dry and barren country covered with dust,
I pictured the broad ocean of bright blue. Instead of hours of raging
thirst I looked forward to the time when it would be "water, water
everywhere," and plenty of ice water to drink. When I was so tired I
sat right down in the road in the dirt, with the sun pouring its rays
down, and the air so stiflingly still that the sweat ran down my whole
body clear to my ankles, then I thought how nice it would be sitting
on deck in an easy chair, with the cool breezes making the bright
sun feel just comfortable. How cosy it would seem, and how I would
rest, take the physical rest I had so well earned, and the mental
rest that would result, with nothing in the blue sky or the smooth
waters to cause the slightest mental action. I would just be lazy and
do nothing but eat, lay around on deck and dream and sleep. After so
many months of constant sight-seeing and hurried thinking, the prospect
of a chance to remain inactive, mentally and physically, for a while,
seemed like paradise to me. It was the prospect of this delightful
sail on a smooth ocean, under a perfectly clear sky and bright sun,
that induced me to buy the excursion ticket at Salt Lake City, and it
was in anticipation of this voyage that my spirits kept up climbing
into the Sierras. The thought of seasickness never entered my mind,
and if it had I should have scoffed at the idea of my being sick if
others were. All this and more I anticipated.
What I realized is this and a great deal more. As I said, we went
out through the Golden Gate into a bank of fog and a gale of cold,
raw wind. The sound of the fog horn at the entrance of the harbor,
which I had heard so many days and nights during the past three
weeks, was the only thing to indicate that we were not a thousand
miles at sea. But that mournful sound soon died away, and when the
fog occasionally lifted afterwards, it showed us that we were indeed
out of sight of land, upon an ocean I had so innocently supposed was
pacific. How much misery I saw there, and how many times I wished
I had kept on from the Geysers and ridden up to Portland on the
wheel! I could have done it and reached there as soon as by boat,
but I did not want to miss the delightful sea voyage. No, I would
not then have missed it for all the world. But I would now.
The fog and cold wind made the ladies' cabin the most comfortable
place, and for a while the piano and the strong voices of the many
veterans on board singing their familiar songs made the time pass
pleasantly, but before dark the trouble began. About ten o'clock I went
below, thinking I was fortunate to even secure a clean bunk in the bow
of a boat where the state-rooms were all taken for two weeks ahead. My
bunk-mate, a fine old gentleman from Kansas, had already turned in,
but he came crawling out from his bunk, saying, "I can't stand this
any longer." I did notice the boat lifted things up higher and let
them fall lower than it did during the day, but I felt all right. "O,
I stayed here too long, I guess," said my friend, as he started for
the round box of sawdust near the bunk. A gentleman in the upper bunk
had been leaning out of his bed, intently but quietly looking down in
this same box for some time, but this doleful remark of my bunk-mate
seemed to suddenly touch his sympathetic nerve, and they mutually,
and at the same time, cast away all bitterness in the same small box
of sawdust. My friend's head, which was the lower of the two suspended
over the box, and which was scantily clothed with gray hair, received
a shampoo of a variety of ingredients, but he scarcely minded this
in his haste to get away, and I undressed and went to sleep after a
while, notwithstanding the place was full of men apparently tearing
themselves all to pieces during most of the night.
Yes, I slept some but not as soundly as I have done, for the
seventy-five sick men down there occupied my thoughts some. And
after a while I got the notion into my head that the boat would
not go down into the trough of the sea so far if I held myself up
a little, so I did. When the boat went up, up, every nerve in my
body tingled, and I felt a prickling sensation clear to the ends of
my fingers and toes, and the higher up the boat went the stronger
was the nervous action. But I did not feel sick. Then when the boat
went down I straightened out stiff and rigid in order, if possible,
to hold the boat. Although I saw it did not make much difference
with the boat whether I tried to sustain it or not, yet I could not
relax my muscles sufficiently to rest easily. But in the morning,
before I could get washed, I found out what sea-sickness was, but
only to a slight degree, and for an hour or two.
Lying out on one of the benches on the upper deck with the cold, raw
wind blowing into his pale face, was a young gentleman of thirty,
with blue eyes, but a face so smooth and fair that he looked much
younger, another Bartley Hubbard, if I ever pictured one. He had been
stripped of the blanket he had brought up from the hole of misery,
where it seems he had spent the night near me, the steward saying,
as he took the blanket, "he must go below to lay down," but rather
than do that he lay shivering in the wind. I had found it impossible
to keep warm, even by pacing the decks, and, contrary to rules, had
robbed my bunk of its blankets and was walking about covered from
head to foot in the warm wool; but it did not take long to tuck that
living representative of the leading character in "A Modern Instance"
up warm with my blankets, and when the steward came again to take
them, Bartley said the captain, or some fellow with a uniform cap,
gave them to him. Watching my chances I soon had another pair about
me, but Professor Williams, with heavy underclothing and overcoat,
was unable to keep from shivering, and so forcing those last ones upon
him, I successfully committed a third burglary without being detected,
although the steward came to me afterwards and wanted to know "who
was carrying off the blankets." I said I had taken my own on deck,
but truthfully replied I did not know whether any one else had taken
theirs or not.
Bartley was unable to go down to supper, and after I had brought him
some tea and crackers we enjoyed the sudden change in the faces of
many of the lady passengers, as they sympathizingly patted him on
his feverish cheeks, called him "little fellow," and asked if he was
thinking of his mother, and then were told he was thinking of his
wife and children at home. They didn't pat his cheeks again after
that. After we had waited till everybody else had turned in and he
had flatly refused to go below, under any consideration, we laid
down together on the deck, near the middle of the boat, and slept
warm and well all night with the cold wind blowing across our faces.
The first afternoon out the beds were made up on the floor of the
ladies' cabin before three o'clock, and the bustling stewardess said
to a spinster, among others: "Come, take your bed now if you want
to be sure of it." The spinster hesitated, before all the gentlemen
then in the cabin, and looked shy, but the stewardess repeated the
request with impatience, almost, when the maiden lady replied in
a low, complaining voice, as she looked at the gentlemen present:
"Why, I don't want to go to bed now." She felt relieved, however,
when she found it was only to claim the bed by placing baggage on it.
The same afternoon I was talking with some lady friends, where the
deck was rather crowded, when I heard, just behind me, the voice of
this same kind, but business-like stewardess, saying, "Come! out of
the way, little boy," and turning around to see who the youngster
was I saw that whoever he was he had suddenly disappeared, and that
I was the only person in her way. The ladies, who had just a moment
before expressed admiration for the manly effort that it seemed to
them was necessary to make such a trip as I had, now smiled, in fact
all did, everyone within hearing, and no one laughed heartier than the
"little boy."
And what an appetite I expected to have from sniffing the salt sea
air all day, when, in reality, after that short season of personal
disgust with the inner man in the morning, I got sufficient nourishment
by sniffing the boiled-vegetable air every time I passed the ladies'
cabin door. The very sound of the gong was nauseating, and what in the
world that young fellow wanted to go around through the different decks
whanging away eighteen times a day, and calling on us to go down and
eat, when the thought of doing so was more than sufficient! Apparently,
from the sound of the gong, it was eat, eat all the time; but I doubt
if many did more than go through the form of eating. I did not eat
more than one square meal out of the eight on the boat.
Forty-five hours after we lost sight of land the boat stopped and
floated around in the fog among a lot of buoys, and soon after got
across the bar and steamed up the Columbia River to Astoria, and a
short time later to Portland. The whole voyage was a cold, foggy,
uninteresting ride; the sun never shone once; but on the boat the
experience to me was new, and disagreeable as much of it was, I am not
sorry for it. Still, very few of the passengers will take that trip
again. We were still further disappointed in finding the atmosphere
along the river very smoky, and after stopping over night at Portland,
a city finely built, but like San Francisco, with a Chinatown in the
very heart of it, we took the train, or most of the boat party did,
at 3 p. m., and went slowly up the south bank of the Columbia River.
A bicycle is some bother in traveling on the cars, for where they
run such long trains as they do on all these trans-continental lines,
and consequently have so much baggage to load, the machine is the last
piece to be taken aboard, and as it is always at owner's risk I often
have to hand it up as the train is starting, and then jump on myself,
rather than leave it to be left, perhaps. The steamship company would
neither take it as a part of the one hundred and fifty pounds of
baggage allowed every passenger nor allow me to care for it, and I
had to ship it by freight, still at owner's risk, at an anticipated
expense of three or four dollars, but when I saw it unload on the
wharf at Portland, among a lot of horses and truck wagons, I thought
the owner was running a great risk of having it smashed by leaving
it there any longer, and so I walked away with it, asking questions
of no one. Whether the owner took too great a risk by so doing is
still unsettled.
The ride up the river by boat, with a clear atmosphere, must certainly
equal in grandeur that up the Hudson, but the smoke was too dense
to see across the water and we could only catch a glimpse of the
shadowy outlines of the high mountains on either side and see for
a few seconds the beautiful little waterfalls coming down over the
rocks. Then again it was rather aggravating to hear the roar of the
river as we stopped in the night at a station somewhere, and to go
out and see the ghost of what must have been a magnificent sight by
daylight--some great falls in the river.
I have seen and heard just enough of this country to wish to make
another trip, but it should be taken four or five months earlier in the
year; and other mistakes can be avoided. What there was in the trip
to the Geysers to cause it I can't think, for the roads were smooth
(no such pounding as there was riding through Illinois), but the
result of that trip has been another eruption, not at the Geysers, but
upon me. Where there is the Devil's kitchen, the Devil's gristmill,
and lots of other articles of furniture belonging to his satanic
majesty, it is certainly a devil of a place for a wheelman to visit,
but in going there I did not look forward to any such outcome of the
trip. And that is just what is the matter with me now. I can't look
forward to the unpleasant results. In short I have boiled over again,
and as a result of these eruptions I shall carry back with me as a
souvenir of the trip, many miniature craters of extinct volcanoes.