with a charming long flush deck from bows to stern of immense length.
She is cram-full; for it is the end of March, and all Indians who can
get away—officers, civilians, invalids, and young children—are on
their way home before the hot season sets in. Some cabins have been
reserved for passengers waiting at Galle, and we from Australia are a
not very welcome addition to the already large number, and are probably
set down as at best successful diggers, and as most likely holders of
tickets-of-leave. But with or without tickets-of-leave we soon shake
down, and get on pretty well with each other, for there is no room for
quarrelling. There are some five hundred human beings on board, of whom
more than half are passengers, and of these above fifty are children.
They are pale, sickly, quiet little beings, these children, or one does
not know how the ship would hold them, for they are under little or no
control. Often half a dozen or more have been confided to the care of
one invalid lady, who has about enough to do to take care of herself.
As for the ayahs, of whom there are plenty, they have not a shadow
of authority over their charges, and submit as a matter of course to
thumps and abuse in answer to their feeble threats and entreaties.
It is worth while to stroll over the ship about midnight, when everyone
has settled down for the night. The season is not yet advanced and
hot enough to oblige everyone to sleep on deck, but on the after-deck
under the awning are perhaps twenty men-passengers asleep—some on
mattresses brought up from their cabins, others on the benches or on
cane lounging-chairs. Forward, near the funnel and galley and on the
forecastle, the bright moonlight shines upon bodies lying as thick and
as motionless as on a battle-field after a battle—some wrapped head and
all in their garments of white linen or coarse cloth, some in their
natural bare black to the waist, some huddled together, head to feet,
in groups, and some alone, and all without the slightest regard to
whether they are in the gangway or not. In the saloon, on the tables,
or on the narrow benches, with one leg on the table to keep them from
rolling off, lie white-shirted and white-trousered stewards; and on the
floor at their mistresses’ cabin-doors are prostrate ayahs, so exactly
in the way that in the half-light one almost has to feel for them to
avoid treading on them in passing. On the lockers in the stern are a
few children and an ayah or two; but the head-quarters of the children
are down below on the lower-deck, where they are laid out by dozens on
the table, on cushions, shawls, and anything that comes to hand, while
over them the punkah, its strings connected with the engines, fans the
air steadily the whole night through. And all seem to sleep peacefully
and even comfortably each after his fashion, for the north-east monsoon
is just dying away, there is not a wave to stir the ship, and every
port and scuttle to within two or three feet of the-water-line is open
to admit the air.
We carry on the monsoon till Cape Guardafui is in sight; then comes a
strong south-east breeze heavy with moisture blowing up the gulf, and
on the morning but one after, the rising sun lights up brilliantly the
red and yellow mountains which stretch across the little peninsula of
Aden, rising up behind it in high peaks and ridges abrupt and sharp
and serrated like the Dolomite mountains of the Tyrol. And in an hour
or two the _Tarus_ drops her anchor within a quarter of a mile of the
shore, among steamers and ships of war and transports on their way to
Annesley Bay to feed the Abyssinian Expedition, now near its goal at
Magdala.
Like King George’s Sound, Aden is an isolated corner of a continent,
cut off by deserts from land-communication with the outer world of
civilization, and important only as a refuge or coaling-station for
shipping. Wild tribes of Bedouins are the only inhabitants of the
deserts which bound the peninsula, and for some years after our
occupation of it they made repeated attacks upon us; and strong
fortifications, garrisoned chiefly by Bombay sepoy regiments, now guard
the small space where it is possible to penetrate the strong natural
defence of the mountains.
And the impression of strange wild primeval desolation is increased
as we land. Moist as is the air in the gulf, the atmosphere of Aden
itself is as dry as can be conceived, and tempts one, protected by a
green veil and an umbrella, to ride or walk, or even run, in spite
of the fierce sun which blazes out of the unclouded sky. Scarcely a
morsel of vegetation, not a blade of grass is to be seen, only at rare
intervals in the sand a leafless shrub. For at Aden not a drop of rain
falls often for years in succession, though the mountain-peak not four
miles from the harbour is capped with cloud. Water is supplied chiefly
by distillation from the sea, and also from huge tanks. We drive to
see them, passing strings of camels, and tall, dirty, melancholy,
scowling Arabs, and a wretched Arab village of huts of mud and straw
like a warren of ill-instructed rabbits, and turn up a hill through
fortifications and covered ways hewn in the rock, where white-coated
sepoy sentinels stand on guard, and down on the other side to the
cantonments and to the Arab town of Aden itself, for where we landed is
not Aden proper but the Bunder or port. They are a strange memorial of
the past, those tanks. They are hewn out of the solid rock one above
another in a steep gulley of the cloud-capt mountain, from whence at
long intervals torrents of water pour down and fill them. Tradition
assigns them an origin anterior to the time of Abraham, but there is no
fragment of sculpture to help to give them a date; they are only huge
irregular basins in the rock, capable of holding from a quarter to two
or three millions of gallons each, and for centuries were almost choked
with rubbish, till within the last few years our Government has cleared
them out and made them available again.
Early the same afternoon we are steaming away again for Suez, and at
midnight pass through the Straits of Babel-mandeb. The little island
of Perim divides the straits into two. We pass through the eastern and
narrower passage, which is not much more than a mile wide, and by the
bright moonlight both the island and the Arabian coast are clearly
visible. A few years ago, when the importance of the position of the
island first became apparent, and while consuls and envoys were busy
discussing to whom it belonged—for it was then uninhabited—the English
quietly took possession of it, and are now admitted to have thereby
acquired a good title to it. An officer or two and about half a company
of troops from Aden are located on it as garrison, and considering that
it is perfectly bare, without an inhabitant or a tree, or a blade of
grass, or a hill, or water, or, I believe, any animal except rats, and
in a climate like a furnace, it must be about as unpleasant a prison to
be confined in as well could be found anywhere.
And now we are in the much-dreaded and famous Red Sea. Dreaded it
justly is on account of the terrible heat there during the summer
months. A captain now on another station told me that when on this
line he sometimes lost passengers (most of them invalids, probably) at
the rate of one or two every day. Why the heat is so intolerable is
not very clear, as the actual temperature by the thermometer is never
remarkably high—nothing like so high as in many other places where
heat is not much complained of. Fortunately, we are too early in the
season to suffer from it, and it is scarcely so hot as before reaching
Aden. The strong north-westerly breeze too, which almost always
blows down the sea, meets us and refreshes us. How the navigation
was ever performed before the days of steam is a marvel. One of the
steamers once fell in with a sailing-ship bound from Aden to Suez, and
_seventy-five days out_ from the former place, all the crew ill or dead
with heat, and only the master and one boy available for duty.
The narrowness of the sea and the dangerous coral reefs which lie on
either side, and on which so many fine steamers have been stranded,
make all vessels keep to one uniform course straight up the centre
of it, out of sight of land on either side. Every day some huge
steamer—more often there are two or three—passes with its living
freight. For the first time we fully realise what a mighty highway
of the world it is. Year by year the long sea-passage by the Cape
to India, is less and less followed. Even troops now often take the
overland route, and if ever the Suez canal is opened to vessels of
large tonnage, the change will be greater still. After centuries of
disuse, the old, old road from Europe to India is open again with a
hundred times the traffic and importance that it ever had before.
Once only does our vessel pause. A suffering invalid, hoping in vain
to reach home alive, has died during the night. In the morning the
burial-service is read over the coffin wrapped in a Union-jack, and
from a large port on the saloon-deck forward it is lowered gently into
the sea; and after scarce five minutes’ interval, the engines throb
again, and the screw revolves, and the resting-place, unknown and
unmarked, is left behind.
On the sixth day from Aden we are in the gulf of Suez. To the east is
a flat coast, and beyond is the range of Sinai, scarcely visible. On
the west are sandstone cliffs of brilliant red and yellow contrasting
exquisitely with the bright blue sky, and lighting up at sunset with
the warmest and most gorgeous colours. But we are in Egypt now, and
English painters as well as writers have already made the rest of our
journey familiar ground, and in their presence it is becoming to be
silent. Not that the sights and interests and pleasures of the homeward
journey are by any means exhausted yet, or that what is still to be
seen loses by comparison with what we have passed. Those who are not
pressed for time may stay a week at Cairo, and taking the Southampton
instead of the Marseilles route, may also stay at Malta, and during the
few hours spent at Gibraltar, walk over the rock and town; and from the
vessel’s deck as she proceeds see the pretty Spanish and Portuguese
coasts for much of the way from thence to Cape St. Vincent.
Melbourne, King George’s Sound, Galle, Aden, Suez, the Pyramids,
Alexandria, Malta, Gibraltar, Southampton Water. What a list for nine
weeks’ luxurious travelling! A fresh country about once a week, a fresh
continent, almost, once a fortnight!
Truly a P. & O. steamer is a wonderful institution, worthy to take
a high place among the unquestionable successes of the last thirty
years. Once, in Tasmania, in a remote little bay of D’Entrecasteaux’
channel, I came across a man getting his living laboriously by hewing
timber in the bush. He told me he had worked in the gang which turned
the first sod (or nearly the first) of the new docks in which the first
P. & O. ships were cradled. One man sows and toils that another may
reap. Few reap so richly, so abundantly, in these days, as those whose
time and means enable them to travel on freshly made tracks to see the
glory of a new world.
XV.
CHANGE OF AIR.
As travelling becomes easier all over the world, an increasing number
of people who suffer from English winters are tempted to migrate
annually in pursuit of sunshine and a more genial climate. Formerly
fewer pleasant places were accessible, and there was comparatively
little choice; and as to keep a consumptive person warm through the
winter was supposed to be the one thing needful, little attention
was paid to other peculiarities of climate. It is only of late years
that doctors have become fully alive to the very different effects
produced on invalids by much the same temperature in different places.
Experience has shown that warmth is by no means the only point to be
considered. People who coughed all day and all night at Nice have
altogether ceased to cough when they went to Pau, where it was quite
as cold. On the other hand, it was found that some people got ill at
Pau who were ill nowhere else. Madeira, where it is _never_ cold, is
going out of repute as a place for consumptive patients; and to the
utter astonishment of everybody, it was found that consumptive people
who spent a winter in Canada not only did not die immediately but got
better. Climates came to be divided into moist-relaxing, as Madeira,
Pisa, and Torquay; dry-relaxing (_sedative_, I believe, is the correct
word), as Pau; exciting, as Cannes and Nice; and so on. Doctors became
more discriminating in different cases, as far as their geographical
knowledge enabled them. But they have something better to do than to
go about sniffing the air and observing thermometers and anemometers
and hygrometers in half a dozen South-European or Devonshire
watering-places. They are obliged for the most part to judge of them
from the reports of the local doctors at each place, each of whom is
likely to be a believer in his own particular place, and directly
interested in making it popular.
And if doctors are compelled to speak with diffidence in distinguishing
between European climates, what must their perplexity be when they
recommend to their patients, as they often do now, and as I hope
they will do more and more, a voyage to Australia? If Cannes has
been confounded with Caen, is it surprising if Tasmania should be
dimly believed to be one of the West India Islands? What they do
know, because they can see that for themselves, is that in cases of
threatening consumption, or weakness following an illness, a marvellous
change for the better, and often complete cure, is the effect of a
voyage round the world. How much of that is due to the sea-air and
sea-life, and how much to the land-air and land-life of the Antipodes,
they have seldom any means of judging; and still less can they know of
the differences in climate between different places in Australasia. An
invalid fellow-passenger of ours was furnished with two medical books
on the climate of Melbourne, one all praises and encouragement, the
other all depreciation and warning. He used to read them alternately in
such proportions as to keep his mind in a just balance between hope and
fear. Poor fellow! the laudatory book had to come out by itself for a
long time, though I think the other appeared now and then when we had
been some time in the tropics.
As for the voyage, three months in circumstances inducing the most
complete inanition of body and mind of course may, or may not, be
desirable. For those who are very weak, either from disease or from
overwork of body or brain, I suppose nothing could be more beneficial.
Such do not feel the want of bodily exercise and mental occupation
which to a more vigorous man is so depressing. It is pleasant to see
them, their thin, pinched features gradually relaxing, welcome each
day which takes them farther south, discard wrap after wrap, and
note down each degree of northern latitude sailed through, till the
tropics are reached; where in a temperature seldom varying by day or
night beyond a range of from 81° to 85° they breathe the open air
throughout the twenty-four hours, with no more exertion than mounting
the companion-steps from the berth by the open port in their cabin,
to the easy lounging chair under the awning on deck. True, it is a
damp heat, and at night it is sometimes soaking wet. Toothache and
neuralgia attack you now, if ever they do, and you probably feel limp
and lazy and head-achy, and disgusted with everything in the ship
except your bath; but the damp does not give cold at sea in the same
way as it would on shore, unless anyone is so foolish as to sleep on
deck. Nothing can be better for the invalids for the first six or seven
weeks of the voyage, and till the tropics are left to the north. But
not long after that comes the inevitable and often sudden change. As
you get to about 35° or 40° south, the strong westerly winds begin to
blow. The ship’s course generally touches 45° south, and runs nearly
in that latitude for two or three weeks. Doctors and other people at
home do not know how much colder 45° south is than 45° north. If, as
is pretty sure to happen sooner or later, the wind blows a little
from the southward, it may bring sleet and snow with it, and the air
may be at 40° or lower for days together, with half a gale of wind
blowing all the time to prevent any mistake about how cold it is. It
needs no description to give an idea of how dangerous or even fatal
this may be to a sick man fresh from his boiling in the tropics, with
no fire (probably) in the ship at which he may warm himself, yet for
ventilation’s sake forced to open window or door from time to time, and
to be hustled everywhere, except in bed, by a tempest of draughts. Nor
is it possible to escape the cold by timing your departure from England
so as to do this part of the voyage in summer. It is more or less cold
here all the year round. All things considered, August, September, or
October are perhaps the best months to begin the voyage. The English
summer is over then, and the coming winter may be cheated.
But much more benefit, I believe, is to be got by invalids from the
air of Australia than from the life on board ship. The authorities are
now pretty well agreed that, at any rate for consumptive patients,
a dry air is the first essential. The statistics, if they are worth
anything, go to prove that in England consumption is prevalent or rare
in proportion as the soil and situation are light, dry, and high, or,
on the other hand, heavy, damp, and low, and that temperature is of
secondary importance. Now the Australian air is peculiarly dry—drier
than anyone who has never been out of England can well imagine. A
new comer from Europe cannot fail to be struck by its exciting,
invigorating effect. Considering how great the heat sometimes is, it
is astonishing how little it is felt, and how little enervating it is.
In the hottest weather the perspiration is absorbed by the air almost
immediately, so that the skin is always almost dry. Those who ride
about in the heat all day feel it less than those who stay at home. The
sun has power even in winter: it is seldom clouded except when rain is
actually falling; on the hottest days there is generally a breeze, and
indeed the greatest heat comes with the strong hot winds. I never felt
any air like it except perhaps that of the Egyptian Desert.
Still it cannot be denied that there are few, if any, places on the
mainland where the climate is pleasant all the year round. The way to
enjoy the country luxuriously is to migrate with the seasons. Some
people indeed like great heat and are all the better for it, and these
may do very well in the interior of Victoria or New South Wales all the
year round. But except at a few places in Gipp’s Land, and elsewhere at
a great elevation above the sea, the summer is too hot to be pleasant.
The burnt-up grass and vegetation are dismal to look at. The dust is
abominable, and the flies sometimes almost amount to a plague. There
is no place which is not more or less liable to hot winds, which blow
violently from the interior for a day, or two days, at a time, laden
with dust, and producing a temperature in the shade often over 100°.
These hot winds are not so bad as might be supposed from the degree of
heat, but still they are not pleasant; and they cease very suddenly,
so that the fall of temperature, especially near the coast, is very
great in a short time. I have heard of a fall of 44°, from 106° to 62°,
in two hours at Sydney. Near the sea-coast, especially the eastern
coast, the air is often cooled by the sea-breezes. At Sydney, for
instance, it is not nearly so hot as in the interior. But, strange to
say, the cool sea-breeze, instead of being invigorating, is in the long
run enervating; and though a stranger at first rejoices in it, it is
dreaded by the inhabitants in general, and is the principal cause of
the situation of Sydney being less healthy and less bracing than that
of most other places in the comparatively temperate parts of Australia.
Sydney is, on the whole, to be avoided by those who are fastidious as
to climate, except in winter—that is, in June, July, and August, when
it is delightful.
Nor is Melbourne a very pleasant or healthy place in which to spend
either winter or summer. It is more agreeable in either spring or
autumn. The hot winds of summer and the cold winds of winter are alike
disagreeable there. And if, by any chance, there is a day without
wind, fog and smoke will sometimes hang over Flinders Street and the
low plain stretching towards the bay, making _longo intervallo_ an
imitation of a London fog. The hospital was crowded with consumptive
patients while I was there; but it would not be fair to lay too much
of this to the charge of climate. Ill built houses account for much.
The comparatively small number of days on which rain falls and the
rapidity with which the ground dries make people careless about making
their houses waterproof, or draining them properly. Kitchens and
servants’ rooms are sometimes separated by an open roofless space from
the rest of the house, and on rainy days constant wet feet and damp
clothes are the consequence. Much illness, too, must be attributed to
the bad drainage of Melbourne. A new-comer is at first delighted with
the clear running water which is always flowing down the gutters of
the principal streets, like Hobson’s Conduit at Cambridge. But if he
passes by at night his nose informs him that the once limpid stream is
neither more nor less than the common sewer of the houses on each side.
There are no underground sewers. The rush of water in the hilly streets
after heavy rain is so great and sudden that it has been hitherto
found impracticable to construct any sewer which would stand against
it without bursting. I believe projects are on foot for an effective
system of drainage; the Victorians are never sparing of money for
public works. But as yet Melbourne is as ill-drained as almost any city
I ever saw inhabited by Englishmen, and if cholera or any other bad
epidemic ever reached Australia the consequences might be fearful. Even
the abundant supply of water, which is such an inestimable advantage in
all other respects, makes the evil worse. For before it was obtained,
the dry air and especially the hot winds acted as effectual deodorizers
by drying up all that was disagreeable, and preventing any effluvium
from it. Now there is too much dilution for this to happen, and in
parts of the town are to be seen green pools of liquid, poisoning the
surrounding air.
Of the climates of Adelaide and of Queensland I cannot speak by
experience. From all accounts Adelaide is charming in winter, but in
summer even hotter and more burnt up than either Sydney or Melbourne.
Brisbane is very hot indeed, almost tropical. But the Darling Downs,
high rolling sheep country a couple of hundred miles inland from
Brisbane, are said to be in winter charming beyond description; and
judging by the experience of a delightful fortnight spent in winter
near Scone, two or three hundred miles to the south of them, I can
well believe that the winter there affords a type of all that is most
charming in Australian air. You have a hot unclouded sun warming you
through and through, and raising even the shade temperature to perhaps
70° or 80°; the air never stagnant with the mournful stillness of an
English autumn day, but stimulating to exercise, and fresh and bracing
beyond what can be conceived in England; boundless open grass country
over which you may ride all day on horses that never tire; at night
stillness, and perhaps a slight frost, which makes the Squatter’s
blazing wood-fire grateful; and after a day of perfect bodily
enjoyment, you totter off with winking eyes to sleep not the restless
sleep of the sickly and feeble, but the sound sleep of the tired and
strong.
Of the general attractions of Tasmania I have already spoken, and
incidentally of those of its climate. It may be described as midway
between the English and the (mainland) Australian, and consequently
far pleasanter than either. There are the hot sun, dry air, almost
constant breeze, cool nights, sudden changes, and comparative rareness
of frost and snow, of Australia; but hot winds are almost unknown
there, the sky is more often clouded, and the spring and autumn months
are sometimes tempestuous and comparatively cold. The extent of deeply
indented sea-coast, and the differences of level in different parts of
the country, produce a considerable variety of climate within a small
compass. At Hobart Town invalids sometimes suffer from the sea-breeze,
which after a hot morning in summer generally blows somewhat keenly
in the afternoon, coming up with remarkable regularity at about one
o’clock. But a few miles inland its keenness is no longer felt. In
summer Tasmania is a delightful refuge from the heat of the continent.
The winter there, though colder than that of Victoria, is far warmer,
drier, and, above all, lighter and sunnier, than that of any place in
England.