AND LAST 252 INDEX 263 MYAMMA: A RETROSPECT OF LIFE AND TRAVEL IN LOWER BURMAH. CHAPTER I. THE VOYAGE. “So long As he could make me with this eye or ear Distinguish him from others, he did keep The deck with glove, or hat, or handkerchief, Still waving, as the fits and stirs of his mind Could best express how slow his soul sail’d on, How swift his ship.” SHAKESPEARE, _Cymbeline_. The conditions under which we now plough the ocean or fly through continents present so remarkable a contrast to the state of affairs half a century back, that we who are in the autumn of life, with the signal of the “sere and yellow leaf” fluttering feebly at the masthead, can scarce realize the old coaching days, with their thirteen hours’ travel to every hundred miles, as more than an old dream. Time in those days was, to all appearances, of less commercial value than it is now, when it represents the Golden Calf, and commerce is conducted by means of electricity and steam. The merchant had to wait patiently for months before learning the fate of his argosies; Clive was eleven months reaching India; experience and nautical skill reduced the time to six, and improved routes to four months; while one month now suffices, through the agency of steam, from Southampton to Bombay. The arrival is then flashed home through that “girdle” which Puck offered to put “round about the earth in forty minutes.” When the Victorian era takes its place in the pages of England’s history, the revolution effected by electricity and steam in its commerce, its battles, and its treaties, will occupy a large and important part of the interesting and glorious chapter. Long voyages under canvas are nowadays therefore, except as a means of recuperating one’s health, the exception; and it is not surprising that the employment of steam power should be so universal, whether from considerations of time and business, or of sea-sickness and pleasure; a steamer moves through fifteen or twenty miles an hour day and night, independent of wind and weather, whereas a sailing vessel is heavily handicapped, having to quadruple the distance in constant “dogs’ legs,” besides being becalmed in certain latitudes for days together. The rising generation greet any allusion to the voyages so common in the palmy days of the now defunct East India Company with _fin-de-siècle_ contempt; living, as they do, in an atmosphere of perpetual excitement and unrest, they are almost incapable of comprehending the frame of mind in which their forefathers plodded through their allotted span of life.