Transcribed , email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
My Dear Sir Arthur Gordon,
To whom should I dedicate this book, but to you, to whom I owe myvisit to the West Indies? I regret that I could not consult youabout certain matters in Chapters XIV and XV; but you are away againover sea; and I can only send the book after you, such as it is, withthe expression of my hearty belief that you will be to the people ofMauritius what you have been to the people of Trinidad.
I could say much more. But it is wisest often to be most silenton the very points on which one longs most to speak.
Ever yours,
C. KINGSLEY.
At last we, too, were crossing the Atlantic. At last the dreamof forty years, please God, would be fulfilled, and I should see (andhappily, not alone) the West Indies and the Spanish Main. Fromchildhood I had studied their Natural History, their charts, their Romances,and alas! their Tragedies; and now, at last, I was about to comparebooks with facts, and judge for myself of the reported wonders of theEarthly Paradise. We could scarce believe the evidence of ourown senses when they told us that we were surely on board a West Indiansteamer, and could by no possibility get off it again, save into theocean, or on the farther side of the ocean; and it was not till themorning of the second day, the 3d of December, that we began to be thoroughlyaware that we were on the old route of Westward-Ho, and far out in thehigh seas, while the Old World lay behind us like a dream.
Like dreams seemed now the last farewells over the taffrel, beneaththe chill low December sun; and the shining calm of Southampton water,and the pleasant and well-beloved old shores and woods and houses slidingby; and the fisher-boats at anchor off Calshot, their brown and olivesails reflected in the dun water, with dun clouds overhead tipt withdull red from off the setting sun—a study for Vandevelde or Backhuysenin the tenderest moods. Like a dream seemed the twin lights ofHurst Castle and the Needles, glaring out of the gloom behind us, asif old England were watching us to the last with careful eyes, and biddingus good speed upon our way. Then had come—still like a dream—aday of pouring rain, of lounging on the main-deck, watching the engines,and watching, too (for it was calm at night), the water from the sponsonbehind the paddle-boxes; as the live flame-beads leaped and ran amidthe swirling snow, while some fifteen feet beyond the untouched oilyblack of the deep sea spread away into the endless dark.
It took a couple of days to arrange our little cabin Penates; todiscover who was on board; and a couple of days, too, to become aware,in spite of sudden starts of anxiety, that there was no post, and couldbe none; that one could not be wanted, or, if one was wanted, foundand caught; and it was not till the fourth morning that the glorioussense of freedom dawned on the mind, as through the cabin port the sunriseshone in, yellow and wild through flying showers, and great north-easternwaves raced past us, their heads torn off in spray, their broad backslaced with ripples, and each, as it passed, gave us a friendly onwardlift away into the ‘roaring forties,’ as the sailors callthe stormy seas between 50 and 40 degrees of latitude.
These ‘roaring forties’ seem all strangely devoid ofanimal life—at least in a December north-east gale; not a whaledid we see—only a pair of porpoises; not a sea-bird, save a lone