The steerage passengers are mostly Chinamen returning to California
after a visit home. Special accommodations are fitted for them. Not
infrequently the Chinese in large numbers take passage on the Pacific
Mail to be landed at Honolulu. This will give the traveller a day in
port, when he should go on shore to enjoy Sandwich Island hospitality,
and see the Hoola-hoola—a native dance that must be prearranged and
paid for, since it is interdicted by the Government because of its
supposed demoralizing influence—on the native. After a voyage of 2,000
miles in 7 days to the northeast, the steamer enters the Golden Gate,
and passes up to the city of San Francisco. A six-day run by railroad,
and the traveller is once again back in New York.
The whole distance travelled by the way described is, in round numbers,
23,000 miles, and the time taken to do this may have been but 80 or 90
days, or more; the longer the better, for it requires plenty of time
to enjoy a trip around the world. It also requires money. About $1,000
would be necessary for passage money alone; double this amount would
be sufficient to take the traveller in comfort and ease, and upon his
arrival home he would consider it money admirably spent.
* * * * *
The traveller reaching San Francisco by the above highway of
circumnavigation can further add to his knowledge of strange countries
by selecting a sea journey to New York, instead of a land run by
railroad across the continent. To go by sea passage must be secured
on board a Pacific Mail coasting steamer, the only line running to
Mexico, Central America, and Panama. Steaming down the beautiful coast
of California, stopping at picturesque harbors in Mexico, anchoring
off roadsteads of Central America, taking on and off a few passengers,
an Englishman, a German, an American, handling cargo—such is the rough
log of the cruise of 20 days and 3,200 miles until the splendid Bay of
Panama is reached. The eight or ten ports of call are better seen from
the ship than from the shore. The enchantment of distance gives way
upon close examination to pity and disgust, for dirt, indigence, and a
total ignorance of how to live decently are noticeable everywhere.
At Panama two widely different routes leading to the United States are
offered: the one goes over the Isthmus of Panama by rail and thence to
New York by sea; the other stretches away down the west coast of South
America, through the Straits of Magellan, and up the Atlantic highway.
By the first route the railway journey over the 45 miles of land
separating the Pacific from the Atlantic Ocean, crosses, recrosses, and
runs beside the deserted canal, affording ocular proof of the failure
of the scheme. At both Panama and Colon the same appearance of being
left is noticeable. The business of the two ports is one of transit
only, but is sufficiently great to furnish employment to some thousands
of Americans and Jamaicans.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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