Four years aboard the whaleship: Embracing cruises in the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, and Antarctic oceans, in the years 1855, '6, '7, '8, '9Whitecar, William B.
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Four years aboard the whaleship: Embracing cruises in the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, and Antarctic oceans, in the years 1855, '6, '7, '8, '9
Whitecar, William B.
Sailors; Voyages and travels; Whaling
The German sailors were the merriest of any nation whom I saw on
liberty--gathering in little knots, and singing the songs of their
fatherland with the utmost good-fellowship, and not without melody.
They were very exclusive in their associations, and mixed with none but
their own circle of shipmates.
The markets of Mauritius were filled with fruit of the various kinds
to be found in tropical climates--the pine-apple, cocoa-nut, banana,
oranges, lemons, and limes, all being found here in abundance. The
favorite condiment of the blacks is the sugar-cane, which they suck
in pieces as long as themselves; and two youngsters may be seen,
each supporting and sucking away at either end of a piece of green
sugar-cane a fathom in length.
This city differs very much from Hobartown in two of its striking
features. In the latter city, at every corner is to be seen a
mendicant; in Port Louis I did not see a single person soliciting
charity. The other feature that I refer to is the absence of all
itinerant hawkers, except the cake venders, who are the only class of
petty tradesmen who make a depot of the streets for the sale of their
goods; whilst in the capital of Van Diemen’s Land, as I have remarked
elsewhere in my notice on it, at every step one is beset by these
pertinacious leeches, anxious to make a sale.
But in another point there is a perfect resemblance between both
cities--that is the presence of a regiment of British infantry; a
provision that Great Britain never neglects in any of her colonies,
governing her subjects by appealing to their fears of the bayonet,
wielded by a hireling and remorseless soldiery. This regiment is about
leaving its station here for the seat of war in India. I conversed
freely with several of its members, and although they displayed no
symptoms of fear at the prospect of being engaged with an enemy, still
there was a total lack of enthusiasm or patriotism. From the atrocities
so glaringly held before the public by the English journals, as
committed by the Sikhs on British residents in India, I had expected to
find an eagerness on the part of the gentlemen with the red coats, to
avenge their countrymen and countrywomen so barbarously maltreated; but
so wags the world, one half caring not or feeling not for the miseries
or misfortunes of the other half.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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