A Few Words Concerning The Precautions Advisable For Anyone Who Is About
To Take A Long Sea-Voyage May Perhaps Be Useful.
First and foremost,
unless provided with a companion whom he well knows and can trust, he
must have a cabin to himself.
There are many men with whom one can be
on excellent terms when not compelled to be perpetually with them, but
whom the propinquity of the same cabin would render simply intolerable.
It would not even be particularly agreeable to be awakened during a
hardly captured wink of sleep by the question "Is it not awful?" that,
however, would be a minor inconvenience. No one, I am sure, will repent
paying a few pounds more for a single cabin who has seen the
inconvenience that others have suffered from having a drunken or
disagreeable companion in so confined a space. It is not even like a
large room. He should have books in plenty, both light and solid. A
folding arm-chair is a great comfort, and a very cheap one. In the hot
weather I found mine invaluable, and, in the bush, it will still come in
usefully. He should have a little table and common chair: these are
real luxuries, as all who have tried to write, or seen others attempt
it, from a low arm-chair at a washing-stand will readily acknowledge.
A small disinfecting charcoal filter is very desirable. Ship's water is
often bad, and the ship's filter may be old and defective. Mine has
secured me and others during the voyage pure and sweet-tasting water,
when we could not drink that supplied us by the ship. A bottle or two
of raspberry vinegar will be found a luxury when near the line. By the
aid of these means and appliances I have succeeded in making myself
exceedingly comfortable. A small chest of drawers would have been
preferable to a couple of boxes for my clothes, and I should recommend
another to get one. A ten-pound note will suffice for all these things.
The bunk should not be too wide: one rolls so in rough weather; of
course it should not be athwartships, if avoidable. No one in his right
mind will go second class if he can, by any hook or crook, raise money
enough to go first.
On the whole, there are many advantageous results from a sea-voyage.
One's geography improves apace, and numberless incidents occur pregnant
with interest to a landsman; moreover, there are sure to be many on
board who have travelled far and wide, and one gains a great deal of
information about all sorts of races and places. One effect is,
perhaps, pernicious, but this will probably soon wear off on land. It
awakens an adventurous spirit, and kindles a strong desire to visit
almost every spot upon the face of the globe. The captain yarns about
California and the China seas - the doctor about Valparaiso and the
Andes - another raves about Hawaii and the islands of the Pacific - while
a fourth will compare nothing with Japan.
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