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Updated: May 8, 2025
The Schootka increased her speed, and, to the consternation of the Turks, succeeded in touching the gun-boat just behind the paddle-boxes, but the torpedo refused to explode, and the Schootka was compelled to haul off, and make for shelter under a heavy fire from the gun-boat and the Circassian riflemen, which quite riddled her. While she was making off a second Turkish gun-boat hove in sight.
Now, the steamer smokes immensely, and occasionally blows at the paddle-boxes like a vaporous whale- greatly disturbing nervous loungers. Now, everything in the harbour splashes, dashes, and bobs. Now, the fishing-boats that have been out, sail in at the top of the tide.
I have been pacing the bridge between the paddle-boxes, contemplating this scene, until we dropped our anchor, and I came down to tell you of this my first experience of the Yangtze. And what will the sum of those experiences be? We are going into an unknown region, along a river which, beyond Nankin, has not been navigated by Europeans.
Our boat was one of the older paddle steamers. We were so fortunate as to have a friend at Court, and the best cabins on the ship were placed at our disposal. I was very grateful to that friend, for it was very rough, and our paddle-boxes were often under water.
He informed them that the carriage belonged to a Nabob from Calcutta and Jamaica enormously rich, and with whom he was engaged to travel; and at this moment a young gentleman who had been warned off the bridge between the paddle-boxes, and who had dropped thence on to the roof of Lord Methuselah's carriage, from which he made his way over other carriages and imperials until he had clambered on to his own, descended thence and through the window into the body of the carriage, to the applause of the couriers looking on.
Percy Noakes having considered it as important that the number of young men should exactly tally with that of the young ladies, as that the quantity of knives on board should be in precise proportion to the forks. ‘Now, is every one on board?’ inquired Mr. Percy Noakes. ‘Go on!’ cried the master of the boat from the top of one of the paddle-boxes.
A cheer rose from us when a curious craft, with high paddle-boxes, and machinery rising above her deck, hove in sight, and came gliding up the stream. She brought the greatly required stores for the fort; and the skipper undertook to convey the whole of our party down the stream to the man-of-war steamer waiting her return.
Then friends were abruptly dismissed two guns were fired the lashings were cast off the stars and stripes flaunted gaily from the 'fore the captain and pilot took their places on the paddle-boxes the bell rang our huge paddle-wheels revolved, and, to use the words in which the same event was chronicled by the daily press, "The Cunard royal mail steamer Canada, Captain Stone, left the Mersey this morning for Boston and Halifax, conveying the usual mails; with one hundred and sixty-eight passengers, and a large cargo on freight."
There appears to be no first, second, or third class; everybody pays the same fare, and everybody wanders at his own sweet will into every nook and corner of the upper deck, perches himself on top of the paddle-boxes, loafs on the pilot's bridge, or reclines among the miscellaneous assortment of freight piled up in a confused heap on the fore-deck; in short, everybody seems perfectly free to follow the bent of his inclinations, except to penetrate behind the scenes of the aftmost deck, where, carefully hidden from the rude gaze of the male passengers by a canvas partition, the Moslem ladies have their little world of gossip and coffee, and fragrant cigarettes.
Like all the other Atlantic steamers, the run of the deck is almost a straight line. Around the funnel, and between the paddle-boxes, is a long wooden house, and another is placed at the stern. These contain the state-rooms of the captain and officers; and in a cluster are to be found the kitchen, the pastry-room, and the barber's shop.
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