Frank Coffee

“ The anchorage is bad. Along the coast are rich deposits of sponges that bid fair to rival the far-famed beds of the Mediterranean. Thursday Island sponges are shaped like a clown's cap and are of endless variety. For many years the pearl divers had seen them, but had paid no attention to them, thinking they were merely a mushroom growth of no value. An American claims to have obtained a concession to exploit these promising fields.
Sponges vary in value from eight cents to six dollars and a half per pound. Australia alone uses $60,000 worth of sponges a year, and most of them are imported. ”

“ Hong Kong and Canton Leaving Manila behind, we headed for Hong Kong. The harbor of that Chinese port we discovered to be six miles long, and it was splendidly protected by mines and by masked batteries on the hills which rose on either side. Our captain informed us that on some days in Hong Kong harbor there is a preponderance of Japanese shipping, sometimes more of it than that of any other nation, although Hong Kong is the terminus of all big steamship lines of the world's trading in these seas. ”

“ Female slavery still exists in China, deny it who may. A physician assured me that men in Canton and Hong Kong can obtain possession of children at various ages and adopt them, which simply means that they have bought them from their parents. And if the children try to run away from their masters, the police will render every assistance in tracing and returning the fugitives.
Chinese conditions and customs permit widest latitude in religion, which naturally includes the same "liberality" in morals. ”

“ If the passenger desires to spend some time in Victoria and on Vancouver Island in fishing, permission is readily given him by the steamship companies. Fish abound in the numerous lakes and rivers, and the scenery is unsurpassed. If the tourist should arrive in the shooting season, he would find good sport in bagging pheasants, pigeons and various other birds.
Arriving at Vancouver, we discover one of the prettiest marine cities in the world, and the Pacific terminus of the Canadian Pacific Railway. ”

“ A typhoon was described to me as a mighty wind of extreme velocity, covering a vast area, and resembling a blizzard ; but it has no fixed direction and moves over land or sea with the same ease and force. In a cyclone, of which the center is a vacuum, the suction is so powerful that it draws in birds, which have been known to drop down helpless on the decks of ships. A cyclone usually travels in one direction and its path is generally less than a half mile wide. ”

“ People who do not live much on the sea are often puzzled to understand why navigators make the Great Circle between ports in the North and South Pacific or Atlantic, hence, an explanation and description of the route between the Orient and America may be of interest to many of my readers. A ship sailing about due east from Yokohama to San Francisco would travel 4,700 miles. ”

“ After these fearful passengers have spent a day in Honolulu and its environs it is a pleasure to listen to their enthusiastic comments on their return to the vessel at night. They fairly bubble with delight at the details of the picture that has been revealed to them during the day.
I find that nearly all travelers who are about to experience the tropics for the first time have a dread of the expected hot weather they are to suffer. But the tropical heat in MidPacific is not severe. On this voyage of the Makura it has been only 84 degrees so far. ”

“ Most of the passengers on English ships dress for dinner, and in consequence money spent on a couple of white duck mess (Eton) jackets and white vests will guarantee a lot of comfort on a trip through the tropics. Travelers from the United States and Canada should provide themselves with three different weights of clothing, as they will undergo many varying temperatures.
Speaking of dressing for dinner reminds me that an English company trading between London and Yokohama and Australia almost insists upon saloon passengers donning the conventional garb for the chief meal of the day. ”

“ House rent is high in Hong Kong, for thirteen per cent, on the actual rental paid is levied for general taxes. Hong Kong is a free port except for a duty on spirits. Even tobacco is allowed free of duty. Rickshaws, one of the characteristic institutions of China, are subject to a wheel tax of seven dollars annually.
Hong Kong is not a city, as many suppose, but an island, thirty miles in circumference. Victoria is the city proper. It is the headquarters for the British military garrison in the Far East, and a governor is sent on from England, with quite an entourage. ”

“ At Suva and Honolulu the natives swim around the steamer, diving for the silver coins thrown overboard by passengers. It is rare sport. The late Hon. "Jack" Want, a popular Sydney barrister, used to tell a good story of a confrere who nearly lost his life once leaning over the ship's side at such a moment. He was so fond of fees, "Jack" said, that he had to be restrained from jumping in among the native swimmers to get a share of the silver thrown in the water.
Fijians do not take kindly to hard work, and in consequence many thousands of natives of India are imported to cultivate the crops. ”

“ I have had considerable experience in the changing of money in different parts of the world, but the various values placed on currency in China puzzled me and every other traveler I met. The Chinese are clever mathematicians, and for "ways that are dark" the Chinaman at home is fully equal to the reputation given him by Bret Harte in California. The Chinese excel in banking and finance.
About ten years ago a Chinese manager of certain departments in the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank embezzled funds. ”

“ The population of the Fiji Islands is 87,000 natives and 90,000 Indians. A governor is appointed by the British parliament. He receives three thousand pounds a year. The total revenue is £240,000 annually.
The future of the Fijian Islands is described as uncertain, owing to the Indian Government blocking the importation of industrial labor—the contracts of the present laborers expire in 1921.
The natives are a happy lot, and they do not worry so long as they have enough to eat. Elephantiasis prevails among them, as it does in most islands of the Pacific. ”

“ I am glad to record that doctors are now allowed to charge passengers for attendance when their services have not been made necessary by any accident or illness due to the ship.
San Francisco to Sydney From another book of jottings, I gather the following notes of a voyage on the Sonoma, in October, 1914.
The residents of California get more pleasure out of life than almost any other people of the world. They are cheerful and hospitable. Incidentally, they are not slow about saying that if Columbus had landed on the Pacific coast of America first, New York would still be a cow pasture. ”

“ They cannot live in fresh water.
My thoughts leap to another fact with the lightning-like character that often marks the globe-trotter. It is not so many years ago since the dividing line between British and American territory was decided upon; and only for the stubbornness of an old English surveyor British Columbia might have embraced within her borders the whole State of Washington. Some time in the middle of the nineteenth century, disputes arose as to the proper boundary line between the United States and British Columbia. ”

“ Work here is most profitable, and the Parsees and Armenians are the bosses.
One of the most interesting industries in the world is located on the Island of Tatokujima, in the Bay of Ago, Japan. Here are strange farm lands indeed, whose crops are lustrous pearl. Oyster shells have a smooth coating inside called mother-of-pearl or nacre, which the bivalve builds slowly layer on layer. Now the smallest foreign substance entering the shell of an oyster causes it an intolerable irritation, which the oyster endeavors to allay by coating it with this mother-of-pearl. ”

“ The Cantonese will often ask a price in excess of what they will accept for an article. For example: A Seattle lady admired a brass vase and was bargaining for it through her interpreter with the merchant, who wanted seventy-five dollars gold; a Honolulu gentleman, Mr. Vida, who lives in Shanghai, was present, and dissuaded the lady from closing the deal; and later on he got it for her at thirty dollars; her guide-interpreter had been conspiring with the shopkeeper to rob the unsuspecting tourist.
Between Canton and Hong Kong the country is largely given over to rice-growing. ”

“ To understand the Great Circle, take a string, draw it tight around a lemon. Now, move the string up and down, and this will illustrate the point I am trying to make about sailing the Great Circle. Capetown and Adelaide are 38 degrees south latitude. Vessels from Capetown to Australia, however, make this Great Circle by steaming south to latitude 50 degrees. To elucidate further, I may remind the reader that there are sixty miles in a degree of latitude, but only at the equator is there this distance in a degree of longitude, which tapers to zero at the poles. ”

“ No death, marriage or birth records are kept in China, so it is impossible to get any statistics on the death-rate. But Canton and Hong Kong are visited by every known disease, and it is no exaggeration to say that there are from twenty to thirty cases of plague daily. Smallpox is always prevalent, but in Canton the form of it is not so malignant as is found elsewhere in the kingdom. The Chinese have a very peculiar method of vaccination, which was probably practiced ages before Jenner introduced his. ”

“ Vancouver itself is so surrounded by ocean inlet and by waters generally that it forms a peninsula. The Canadian Pacific Railway for five hundred miles east, as far as Banff, carries one through the Cascade Range, Gold Range, Selkirk Range, and Rocky Mountain scenery of unrivaled grandeur, reaching in places an altitude of five thousand feet. In recent years tunnels have been driven—one of them five miles long— to avoid the steeper ascents. ”

“ As a matter of fact, one can live as cheaply forty or fifty days on the Pacific as in the best hotels in London or New York.
Sydney to Vancouver We left Sydney on July 6, 1916, on the Steamship Makura, with two hundred passengers in the saloon, and on Sunday, about noontime, we sighted the Islands of Three Kings, to the north of us; Cape Maria Van Diemen, New Zealand, to the south. It was at the Three Kings that the Steamship Elingamite was wrecked, in 1902, and a number of lives lost, together with a large number of gold sovereigns. ”

“ At one time rice was extensively grown in these islands, but in 1912 the American Government had to import ten million dollars' worth of rice to feed the inhabitants; indeed, about 1910 the American Government sent steamers loaded with rice along the coast for the natives, whose crops had either failed or were insufficient to meet their needs. Gratitude, we know, is rare in humans; therefore many of the natives would not take the trouble to go down to the shore for their rice supply, but insisted that it be carried to their huts up among the hills. ”

“ A typhoon is not necessarily a sea phenomenon, and on land one of them is terrible in its destructiveness—after one hits a town the spot looks as if it has been bombarded by 18-inch guns. In 1906 a typhoon in Hong Kong killed six hundred people. Great surprise was expressed in Shanghai at a shower of rice a few years ago. It was later ascertained to have been carried by a typhoon from rice fields twenty-five miles away.
The Philippines Continuing our voyage on the Yawata Maru, we arrived at Manila, in the Philippine Islands, about daylight. ”

“ It must be kept dry to remain fit for food. Among the Chinese and Japanese it is a very popular article of diet, particularly for stews and soups.
At Thursday Island Captain Dabelle, our pilot, left us. I may remark that all ships must take pilots inside the Barrier Reef along the Australian coast.
The negro races being migratory, I cannot say what number of the species remain here. But eight hundred Japanese pearl-divers find employment in these waters. Usually, the pearl boats are manned by mixed Malays and New Guinea boys. Fights are frequent. ”

“ They respect the white man, which cannot be said of many aboriginal races. Fijians cannot stand the effects of liquor, and any person selling them alcoholic drinks is liable to a fine of fifty pounds.
The day before we arrived at Suva, we sighted several small islands, among them Fortuna and Alofa, which are in the French Protectorate, the resident governor being located at Wallis, a day's steam to the northeast.
Leaving Suva, we headed for New Zealand. Owing to smallpox in Sydney, nearly all of the Makura's passengers had to be vaccinated, which created a windfall for the ship's doctor. ”

“ Pearls found in these grounds are not the property of the divers as they are among the Thursday Island workers. [2]
The greatest menace experienced by the Binghi, or native boy, is the alligator, which is always on the alert for its dusky and defenseless victims, who, diving au naturel, fall easy prey to the watchful reptile.
Prior to 1914, pearl shell realized one thousand dollars a ton. It is used for the manufacture of buttons, cutlery handles, and various articles of ornament. Pay of the divers is surprisingly little when you take into consideration their daily risk. ”