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If they were to make a home anywhere in the South Seas there could be no better spot than Apia, the principal port and capital of these islands, as it had a good mail service, a most important feature to a writer. The monthly mail-steamers between San Francisco and Sydney, as well as other Australian mail-boats, stopped there.
I therefore made arrangements for staying there two months after leaving Timor Delli in 1861. This I could conveniently do by means of the Dutch mail-steamers, which make a monthly round of the Moluccas.
Nothing more surprising, to men who visit Africa for the first time, than the over-wealth of labour in Madeira and its penury on the Western Coast. At Bathurst they find ships loading or unloading by the work of the Golah women, whose lazy husbands live upon the hardly-earned wage. They see the mail-steamers landing ton after ton of Chinese rice shipped viâ England.
From that time forward these three ships constituted the regular line of mail-steamers, which has been kept up ever since. By the steamer Oregon arrived out Major R. P. Hammond, J. M. Williams, James Blair, and others; also the gentlemen who, with Major Ogden, were to compose a joint commission to select the sites for the permanent forts and navyyard of California.
From that time forward these three ships constituted the regular line of mail-steamers, which has been kept up ever since. By the steamer Oregon arrived out Major R. P. Hammond, J. M. Williams, James Blair, and others; also the gentlemen who, with Major Ogden, were to compose a joint commission to select the sites for the permanent forts and navyyard of California.
A string of lascars from the P. & O. boat caught his eye with a patch of colour, the white calico trousers, the gay embroidered vests, and the red or white turbans bringing a touch of the East to Sydney. Suddenly the piles of the jetty slipped to the rear, and the boat moved out past the huge mail-steamers from London, Marseilles, Bremen, Hongkong, and Yokohama lying at the wharves.
Finally, the Gaboon merchants long preferred forfeiting the benefits of the mail-steamers to seeing themselves invaded by a locust tribe, whose loveliest view is, apparently, that which leads out of Sá Leone. Part of this demoralisation arose from the over-tenderness of the British Government, in deference to the philanthropist and the missionary.
The life must be like making one's home in a lighthouse, plus an eternal roll; and the line gives a weary time to the mail-steamers, as these never know exactly where the Bristol barques will be found. After hugging the coast and prospecting Biribi, we sighted the Drewins, whose natives are a powerful and spirited race, equally accustomed to either element.
From that time forward these three ships constituted the regular line of mail-steamers, which has been kept up ever since. By the steamer Oregon arrived out Major R. P. Hammond, J. M. Williams, James Blair, and others; also the gentlemen who, with Major Ogden, were to compose a joint commission to select the sites for the permanent forts and navyyard of California.
These ship-shops send home their exports by the mail-steamers, and vary their monotonous days by visits on board. They sail home when the cargoes are sold, each vessel making up her own accounts and leaving 'trust, but no debts.
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