Round the World | Page 6

forth its inexhaustible stores to feed Europe, it sends
from the West of its surplus to the older races of the far East. Thus
from all sides, fabled Ceres as she is, she scatters to all peoples from
the horn of plenty. Favored land, may you prove worthy of all your
blessings and show to the world that after ages of wars and conquests
there comes at last to the troubled earth the glorious reign of peace. But
no new steel cruisers, no standing army. These are the devil's tools in
monarchies; the Republic's weapons are the ploughshare and the
pruning hook.
For three hundred miles the Pacific is never pacific. Coast winds create
a swell, and our first two nights at sea were trying to bad sailors, but
the motion was to me so soft after our long railway ride that I seemed
to be resting on air cushions. It was more delightful to be awake and
enjoy the sense of perfect rest than to sleep, tired as we were; so we lay
literally
"Rocked in the cradle of the rude imperious surge,"
and enjoyed it.
To some of my talented New York friends who are touched with
Buddhism just now and much puzzled to describe, and I judge even to
imagine, their heaven, I confidently recommend a week's continuous
jar upon a rough railway as the surest preparation for attaining a just
conception of Nirvana, where perfect rest is held the greatest possible
bliss. Lying, as I did apparently, upon air cushions, and rocked so softly
on the waves, I had not a wish; desire was gone; I was content; every
particle of my weary body seemed bathed in delight. Here was the
delicious sense of rest we are promised in Nirvana. The third day out
we are beyond the influence of the coast, and begin our first experience

of the Pacific Ocean. So far it is simply perfect; we are on the ideal
summer sea. What hours for lovers, these superb nights! they would
develop rapidly, I'm sure, under such skyey influences. The
temperature is genial, balmy breezes blow, there is no feeling of
chilliness; the sea, bathed in silver, glistens in the moonlight; we sit
under awnings and glide through the water. The loneliness of this great
ocean I find very impressive--so different from the Atlantic
pathway--we are so terribly alone, a speck in the universe; the sky
seems to enclose us in a huge inverted bowl, and we are only groping
about, as it were, to find a way out; it is equidistant all around us;
nothing but clouds and water. But as we sail westward we have every
night a magnificent picture. I have never seen such resplendent sunsets
as these: we seem nightly to be just approaching the gates of Enchanted
Land; through the clouds, in beautiful perspective, shine the gardens of
the Hesperides, and imagination readily creates fairy lands beyond,
peopled with spirits and fays. It is not so much the gorgeousness of the
colors as their variety which gives these sunsets a character of their
own; one can find anything he chooses in their infinite depths. Turner
must have seen such in his mind's eye. "I never saw such sunsets as
these you paint," said the critic of his style. "No; don't you wish you
could?" was the reply. But I think even a prosaic critic would feel that
these Pacific pictures have a spiritual sense beyond the letter, unless,
indeed, he were Wordsworth's friend, to whom
"A primrose by a river's brim A yellow primrose was to him, And it
was nothing more."
He, of course, is hopeless.
* * * * *
THURSDAY, October 31.
We have been a week at sea. Can it be only seven days since we waved
adieu to bright eyes on the pier? We begin to feel at home on the ship.
The passengers are now known to each other, and hereafter the days,
will slip by faster. I went down with the doctor and Vandy to see the
Chinamen to-day. What a sight! Piled in narrow cots three tiers deep,
with passages between the rows scarcely wide enough for one to walk,
from end to end of the ship these poor wretches lie in an atmosphere so
stifling that I had to rush up to the deck for air. So far three have died,
and two have become crazy. My foolish curiosity has made the voyage

less satisfactory, for I cannot forget the danger of disease breaking out
among this horde, nor can I drive the yellow, stupid-looking faces out
of mind. The night of the day in which I had gone below we were
playing a rubber of whist in the cabin when the port-hole at my head
was pushed open, and a voice