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Read Ebook: A Commentary on Herodotus by How W W Walter Wybergh Wells J Joseph
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Ebook has 25 lines and 1516 words, and 1 pages
CHAP.
INDEX
LOOKING FROM LAKE AGNES DOWN ON LAKES MIRROR AND LOUISE ... Frontispiece
CHATEAU FRONTENAC FROM THE OLD RAMPARTS. DAY. QUEBEC
CHATEAU FRONTENAC AND DUFFERIN TERRACE. NIGHT. QUEBEC
MOUNT LEFROY. CANADIAN ROCKIES
A TRAIL IN THE ROCKIES
THE HALT. SADDLEBACK. LAGGAN
LAKE LOUISE. LAGGAN. ALBERTA
IN THE VALLEY OF THE TEN PEAKS. ROCKY MOUNTAINS
ON THE TRAIL, YOHO VALLEY
THE DEVIL'S FINGERS. ROCKY MOUNTAINS
A SENTINEL OF THE ROCKIES
IN THE SELKIRKS. THE RETURN FROM THE HUNT
THE FAIR DOMINION
THE START FROM LIVERPOOL
Luckily going on board ship has to be a bustling business. My two companions and I, who had been promised a four-berth third-class cabin between us, had to bustle quite a lot--to different gangways from which we were rapidly sent back and into various queues, which turned out, after we had waited in them for some time, to be composed of some other class of passenger. We were extremely heated before we found ourselves in the end about to be passed up a gangway at which the medical inspection of a group of Scandinavians was at the moment going on. Scandinavian seems to be a roomy word which covers all Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, Lapps; and no foreigners not coming under this category are carried by the 'Empress' boats.
The theory seems to be in regard to them that they are the only right and proper shipmates for English emigrants going to Canada. They were being pretty carefully examined all the same, men and women alike. The doctors' attention seemed to centre on their heads and eyelids. Hats were pulled off as they came level with them, and tow-coloured hair was grasped and peered into apparently with satisfactory results, for only a couple of elderly people were held back for a few minutes; and they I fancy had not passed the eye test, and were therefore not free from suspicion of having trachoma--a not uncommon North European disease supposed to cause total blindness, which is least of all to be desired in a new country. The two detained Scandinavians were re-examined and passed, after which our turn came. I think we all three felt a little uneasy in the eyelids as we advanced upon the doctor, but we need not have been anxious, for after a swift glance at us he reassured us by grinning and saying, 'There's nothing wrong with you, I should say,'--and so we passed on board. For the next hour or two we were part of a whirl of confused humanity. There is always a tendency among landsmen to become sheepish at sea, and in the steerage there were nine hundred of us, most of whom had never been at sea before. So we rushed together and got jammed down companionways and in passages which even on so big a liner as this could not hold us all abreast, and scrummed to find the numbers of our berths from the steward, and flung ourselves in masses upon our baggage, and pressed pell-mell to the sides of the ship to wave good-bye, and formed a solid tossing square saloonwards when bells rang and we thought they might mean meals.
Of course there must have been even then self-possessed passengers, who knew what they were about and only seemed to be lost with the crowd, and to be vaguely trying to muddle through. Canadians returning to their own country were conspicuous later by reason of their cool bearing and air of knowing their way about the world. And the invisible discipline of the ship that was to turn us all later into reasonable and orderly individuals was no doubt already at work. But the impression any one looking down on us that first evening would have received would have been the impression of a scurrying crowd, fancifully and variously dressed for its Atlantic voyage--clerks in pink shirts and high collars and bowler hats, peasants in smocks, women in the very latest flapping head-gear, or bareheaded and shawled, infants either terribly smart or mere bundles of old clothes.
Up on the first-class deck superior people were walking calmly about with just the right clothes and manners for such a small event as crossing the Atlantic must have been to most of them. Occasionally one of these upper folk would come to the rails, lean over and smilingly stare at us: wondering perhaps at our confusion. But then all our fortunes were embarked on the ship, and only a little part of theirs.
When I went to sleep that night on a clean straw mattress in a lower berth, with a pleasant air blowing in through the port-hole in the passage, we were, I suppose, out to sea, and the air was Atlantic air, and no longer that of the old country.
THE STEERAGE PASSAGE
Apart from its other merits the steerage has this to its credit--every one is very friendly and affable. No one required an introduction before entering into conversation, and the suspicion that we might be making the acquaintance of some doubtful and inferior person who would perhaps presume upon it later did not worry any of us. I sat at a delightful table. Some one who knew the ins and outs of a steerage passage had advised me to go in to meals with the first 'rush,' instead of waiting for the second or third. His theory was that the first relay got the pick of the food. So my two friends and I had taken care to answer the very first call to the saloon, which happened to be for high tea, and, seating ourselves at random, found that we were thereby self-condemned to take every meal in the same order--including breakfast at the unaccustomed and somewhat dispiriting hour of 7 A.M. I do not know that it greatly mattered. In the cabin next ours there were several small children, who appeared to wake and weep about 4 A.M., and either to throw themselves or be thrown out of their berths on to the floor a little later. Their lamentations then became so considerable, that we were not sorry to rise and go elsewhere.
Besides the three of us, there were at our table the following:--
A Norwegian peasant. Going on to the land. Quiet and rapid in his eating.
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