Round the World | Page 6

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 in broken English shouted, "Crazee manee; he makee firee, firee!" I jumped round and saw a Chinaman. Such an expression--Shakespeare alone has described it--
"And with a look so piteous in purport, As if he had been loosed out of hell To speak of horrors."
Fire! that epitome of all that is appalling at sea, the danger each one instinctively dreads, but no one mentions. One ran one way