P.S.--The very beautiful and substantial side-wheel
steamship "Quaker City" has been chartered for the occasion, and will leave New York June 8th.
Humorous half-columns in the local papers, written in the customary silly way by unlicked cub reporters just out of grammar school, tickled the fancy of San Francisco for a fleeting moment in that the
steamship Mariposa had rescued some sea-waifs possessed of a cock-and-bull story that not even the reporters believed.
The swift
steamship travel of to-day did not begin until 1838, when the Great Western raced over the Atlantic in fifteen days.
I had just finished writing "The End of the Tether" and was casting about for some subject which could be developed in a shorter form than the tales in the volume of "Youth" when the instance of a
steamship full of returning coolies from Singapore to some port in northern China occurred to my recollection.
Fifteen days later, two thousand miles farther off, the Helvetia, of the Compagnie-Nationale, and the Shannon, of the Royal Mail
Steamship Company, sailing to windward in that portion of the Atlantic lying between the United States and Europe, respectively signalled the monster to each other in 42@ 15' N.
The steamer which was about to depart from Yokohama to San Francisco belonged to the Pacific Mail
Steamship Company, and was named the General Grant.
The taking of a modern
steamship about the world (though one would not minimize its responsibilities) has not the same quality of intimacy with nature, which, after all, is an indispensable condition to the building up of an art.
There was a little murmur of regret amongst the five hundred and eighty-seven saloon passengers on board the
steamship Lusitania, mingled, perhaps, with a few expressions of a more violent character.
I am going to ask you to serve your country by leaving for Liverpool this afternoon and for Brazil to-morrow on the
steamship Hermes."
When I state that I had passed coal on a
steamship from Behring Sea to British Columbia, and travelled in the steerage from there to San Francisco, it will be understood that I brought nothing back from the Klondike but my scurvy.
"Master of the
steamship Macedonia, seal-hunter," was the answer.
Beginning with a raid on two
steamship companies, it developed into a pitched battle with a city, a state, and a continental coastline.