Shipboard Diary of Samuel Butler
Roman Emperor, London to Lyttelton, 1860



Samuel Butler, having resolved on emigrating to
New Zealand, took his passage in the ill-fated
ship 'Burmah,' which never reached her destination,
and is believed to have perished with all on board.
His berth was chosen, and the passage-money paid,
when important alterations were made in the
arrangements of the vessel, in order to make room for
some stock which was being sent out to the Canterbury
Settlement.

The space left for the accommodation of the pas-
sengers being thus curtailed, and the comforts of tbe
voyage seeming likely to be much diminished, the
writer was most providentially induced to change his
ship, and, a few weeks later, secured a berth in
another vessel.

It is a windy, rainy day--cold withal; a little boat is
putting off from the pier at Gravesend, and making for
a ship that is lying moored in the middle of the river;,
therein are some half-dozen passengers and a lot of
heterogeneous-looking luggage; among the passengers,
and the owner of some of the most heterogeneous of
the heterogeneous luggage, is myself. The ship is an
emigrant ship, and I am one of the emigrants.

On having clambered over the ship's side and found
myself on deck, I was somewhat taken aback with the
apparently inextricable confusion of everything on
board; the slush upon the decks, the crying, the kiss-
ing, the mustering of the passengers, the stowing away
of baggage still left upon the decks, the rain and the
gloomy sky created a kind of half-amusing, half-dis-
tressing bewilderment, which I could plainly see to be
participated in by most of the other landsmen on board.
Honest country agriculturists and their wives were
looking as though they wondered what it would end in;
some were sitting on their boxes and making a show
of reading tracts which were being presented to them
by a serious-looking gentleman in a white tie; but all
day long they had perused the first page only, at least
I saw none turn over the second.

And so the afternoon wore on, wet, cold, and com-
fortless-no _dinner served on account of the general
confusion. The emigration commissioner was taking a
final survey of the ship and shaking hands with this,
that, and the other of the passengers. Fresh arrivals
kept continually creating a little additional excitement
-these were saloon passengers, who alone were per-
mitted to join the ship at Gravesend. By and by a
couple of policemen made their appearance and arrested
one of the party, a London cabman, for debt. He had
a large family, and a subscription was soon started to
pay the sum he owed. Subsequently, a much larger
subscription would have been made in order to have
him taken away by anybody or anything.

Little by little the confusion subsided. The emi-
gration commissioner left; at six we were at last
allowed some victuals. Unpacking my books and
arranging them in my cabin filled up the remainder of
the evening, save the time devoted to a couple of medi-
tative pipes. The emigrants went to bed, and when, at
about ten o'clock, I went up for a little time upon the
poop, I heard no sound save the clanging of the clocks
from the various churches of Gravesend, the pattering
of rain upon the decks, and the rushing of the river as
it gurgled against the ship's side.

Early next morning the cocks began to crow voci-
ferously. We had about sixty couple of the oldest
inhabitants of the hen-roost on board, which were
intended for the consumption of the saloon passengers
---a destiny which they have since fulfilled: young
fowls die on shipboard, only old ones standing the
weather about the line. Besides this, the pigs began
grunting and the sheep gave vent to an occasional
feeble bleat, the only expression of surprise or discon-
tent which I heard them utter during the remainder of
their existence, for now, alas! they are no more. I
remember dreaming I was in a farm-yard, and woke as
soon as it was light. Rising immediately, I went on
deck and found the morning calm and sulky-no rain,
but everything very wet and very grey. There was
Tilbury Fort, so different from Stanfield's dashing pic-
ture. There was Gravesend, which but a year before I
had passed on my way to Antwerp with so little notion
that I should ever leave it thus. Musing in this way,
and taking a last look at the green fields of old England,
soaking with rain, and comfortless though they then
looked, I soon became aware that we had weighed
anchor, and that a small steam-tug which had been
getting her steam up for some little time had already
begun to subtract a mite of the distance between our-
selves and New Zealand. And so, early in the morn-
ing of Saturday, October 1, 1859, we started on our
voyage.

The river widened out hour by hour. Soon our little
steam-tug left us. A fair wind sprung up, and at two
o'clock, or thereabouts, we found ourselves off Rams-
gate. Here we anchored and waited till the tide,
early next morning. This took us to Deal, off which
we again remained a whole day. On Monday morning
we weighed anchor, and since then we have had it on
the forecastle, and trust we may have no further occa-
sion for it until we arrive at New Zealand.

I will not waste time and space by describing the
horrible sea-sickness of most of the passengers, a misery
which I did not myself experience, nor yet will I pro-
long the narrative of our voyage down the channel--it
was short and eventless. The captain says there is
more danger between Gravesend and the Start Point
(where we lost sight of land) than all the way between
there and New Zealand. Fogs are so frequent and
collisions occur so often. Our own passage was free
from adventure. In the Bay of Biscay the water
assumed a blue hue of almost incredible depth ; there,
moreover, we had our first touch of a gale---not that it
deserved to be called a gale in comparison with what
we have since experienced, still we learnt what double-
reefs meant. After this the wind fell very light, and
continued so for a few days. On referring to my diary,
I perceive that on the 10th of October we had only
got as far south as the forty-first parallel of latitude,
and late on that night a heavy squall coming up from
the SW. brought a foul wind with it. It soon freshened,
and by two o'clock in the morning the noise of the flap-
ping sails, as the men were reefing them, and of the wind
roaring through the rigging, was deafening. All next
day we lay hove to under a close-reefed main-topsail,
which,being interpreted, means that the only sail set was
the main-topsail, and that that was close reefed; more-
over, that the ship was laid at right angles to the wind
and the yards braced sharp up. Thus a ship drifts
very slowly, and remains steadier than she would other-
wise; she ships few or no seas, and,. though she rolls a
good deal, is much more easy and safe than when run-
ning at all near the wind. Next day we drifted due
north, and on the third day, the fury of the gale having
somewhat moderated, we resumed---not our course, but
a course only four points off it. The next several days
we were baffled by foul winds, jammed down on the
coast of Portugal; and then we had another gale from
the south, not such a one as the last, but still enough to
drive us many miles out of our course; and then it fell
calm, which was almost worse, for when the wind fell
the sea rose, and we were tossed about in such a manner
as would have forbidden even Morpheus himself to sleep.

And so we crawled on till, on the morning of the 24th of
October, by which time, if we had had anything like
luck, we should have been close on the line, we found
ourselves about thirty miles from the Peak of Teneriffe,
becalmed. This was a long way out of our course,
which lay three or four degrees to the westward at the
very least; but the sight of the Peak was a great treat,
almost compensating for past misfortunes. The Island
of Teneriffe lies in latitude 28°, longitude 16°. It is
about sixty miles long; towards the southern extremity
the Peak towers upwards to a height of 12,300 feet,
far above the other land of the island, though that too
is very elevated and rugged. Our telescopes revealed
serrated gullies upon the mountain sides, and showed
us the fastnesses of the island in a manner that made
us long to explore them. We deceived ourselves with
the hope that some speculative fisherman might come
out to us with oranges and grapes for sale. He would
have realised a handsome sum if he had, but unfor-
tunately none was aware of the advantages offered, and
so we looked and longed in vain. The other islands
were Palma, Gomera, and Ferro, all of them lofty,
especially Palma---all of them beautiful. On the sea-
board of Palma we could detect houses innumerable; it
seemed to be very thickly inhabited and carefully cul-
tivated. The calm continuing three days, we took
stock of the islands pretty minutely, clear as they
were, and rarely obscured even by a passing cloud; the
weather was blazing hot, but beneath the awning it was
very delicious ; a calm, however, is a monotonous thing
even when an island like Teneriffe is in view, and we
soon tired both of it and of the gambols of the blackfish
(a species of whale), and the operations on board an
American vessel hard by.

On the evening of the third day a light air sprung
up, and we watched the islands gradually retire into the
distance. Next morning they were faint and shrunken,
and by mid-day they were gone. The wind was the
commencement of the north-east trades. On the next
day (Thursday, October 27, lat. 27° 40') the cook was
boiling some fat in a large saucepan, when the bottom
burnt through and the fat fell out over the fire, got
lighted, and then ran about the whole galley, blazing
and flaming as though it would set the place on fire,
whereat an alarm of fire was raised, the effect of which
was electrical: there was no real danger about the
affair, for a fire is easily extinguishable on a ship when
only above board; it is when it breaks out in the hold,
is unperceived, gains strength, and finally bursts its
prison, that it becomes a serious matter to extinguish
it. This was quenched in five minutes, but the faces of
the female steerage passengers were awful. I noticed
about many a peculiar contraction and elevation of one
eyebrow, which I had never seen before on the living
human face, though often in pictures. I do n't mean to
say that all the faces of all the saloon passengers were
void of any emotion whatever.

The trades carried us down to latitude 9°. They
were but light while they lasted, and left us soon. There
is no wind more agreeable than the NE. trades. The
sun keeps the air deliciously warm, the breeze deliciously
fresh. The vessel sits bolt upright, steering a SSW.
course, with the wind nearly aft: she glides along with
scarcely any perceptible motion; sometimes, in the cabin,
one would fancy one must be on dry land. The sky is
of a greyish blue, and the sea silver grey, with a very
slight haze round the horizon. The water is very
smooth, even with a wind which would elsewhere raise
a considerable sea. In lat. 19°, long. 25°, we first
fell in with flying fish. These are usually in flocks,
and are seen in greatest abundance in the morning ;
they fly a great way and very well, not with the kind
of jump which a fish takes when springing out of the
water, but with a bonâ fide flight, sometimes close to
the water, sometimes some feet above it. One flew on
board, and measured roughly eighteen inches between
the tips of its wings. On Saturday, November 5,. the
trades left us suddenly after a thunder-storm, which
gave us an opportunity of seeing chain lightning, which
I only remember to have seen once in England. As
soon as the storm was over, we perceived that the wind
was gone, and knew that we had entered that unhappy
region of calms which extends over a belt of some
five degrees rather to the north of the line.

We knew that the weather about the line was often
calm, but had pictured to ourselves a gorgeous sun,
golden sunsets, cloudless sky, and sea of the deepest
blue. On the contrary, such weather is never known
there, or only by mistake. It is a gloomy region.
Sombre sky and sombre sea. Large cauliflower-headed
masses of dazzling cumulus tower in front of a back-
ground of lavender-coloured satin. There are clouds of
every shape and size. The sails idly flap as the sea
rises and falls with a heavy regular but windless swell.
Creaking yards and groaning rudder seem to lament
that they cannot get on. The horizon is hard and black,
save when blent softly into the sky upon one quarter or
another by a rapidly approaching squalL A puff of wind
- 'Square the yards!'-the ship steers again; another-
she moves slowly onward; it blows-she slips through
the water; it blows hard-she runs; very hard-she flies;
a drop of rain-the wind lulls; three or four more of
the size of half-a-crown-it falls very light; it rains
hard, and then the wind is dead-whereon the rain
comes down in a torrent which those must see who
would believe. The air is so highly charged with moisture
that any damp thing remains damp and any dry thing
dampens: the decks are always wet. Mould springs up
anywhere, even on the very boots which one is wearing;
the atmosphere is like that of a vapour bath, and the
dense clouds seem to ward off the light, but not the
heat, of the sun. The dreary monotony of such weather
affects the spirits of all, and even the health of
some. One poor girl who had long been consumptive,
but who apparently had rallied much during the voyage,
seemed to give way suddenly as soon as we had been a
day in this belt of calms, and four days after, we lowered
her over the ship's side into the deep.

One day we had a little excitement in capturing a
shark, whose triangular black fin had been veering about
above water for some time at a little distance from the
ship. I will not detail a process that has so often been
described, but will content myself with saying that he
did not die unavenged, inasmuch as he administered a
series of cuffs and blows to anyone that was near him
which would have done credit to a prize-fighter, and
several of the men got severe handling or, I should
rather say, 'tailing' from him. He was accompanied
by two beautifiilly striped pilot fish-the never-failing
attendante of the shark.
 
One day during this calm we fell in with a current,
when the aspect of the sea was completely changed. It
resembled a furiously rushing river, and had the sound
belonging to a strong stream, only much intensified;
the waves, too, tossed up their heads perpendicularly into
the air, whilst the empty flour-casks drifted ahead of us
and to one side. It was impossible to look at the sea with-
out noticing its very singular appearance. Soon a wind
springing up raised the waves and obliterated the more
manifest features of the current, but for two or three
days afterwards we could perceive it more or less.
There is always at this time of year a strong westerly
set here. The wind was the commencement of the
SE. trades, and was welcomed by all with the greatest
pleasure. In two days more we reached the line.

We crossed the line far too much to the west, in
long. 31° 6', after a very long passage of nearly
seven weeks, such as our captain says he never re-
members to have made; fine winds, however, now
began to favour us, and in another week we got out of
the tropics, having had the sun vertically overhead, so
as to have no shadow, on the preceding day. Strange
to say, the weather was never at all oppressively hot
after lat. 2° porth, or thereabouts. A fine wind, or
indeed a light wind, at sea removes all unpleasant heat
even of the hottest and most perpendicular sun. The
only time that we suffered any inconvenience at all
from heat was during the belt of calms ; when the sun
was vertically over our heads it felt no hotter than on
an ordinary summer day. Immediately, however, upon
leaving the tropics the cold increased sensibly, and in
lat. 27° 8' I find that I was not warm once all day.
Since then we have none of us ever been warm, save
when taking exercise or in bed; when the thermometer
was up at 50°we thought it very high and called it warm.
The reason of the much greater cold of the southern
than of the northern hemisphere is that the former
contains so much less land. I have not seen the ther-
mometer below 42° in my cabin, but am sure that out-
side it has often been very much lower. We almost all
got chilblains, and wondered much what the winter of
this hemisphere must be like if this was its summer :
I believe, however, that as soon as we get off the coast
of Australia, which I hope we may do in a couple of
days, we shall feel a very sensible rise in the thermo-
meter at once. Had we known what was coming, we
should have prepared better against it, but we were
most of us under the impression that it would be warm
summer weather all the way. No doubt we felt it
more than we should otherwise, on account of our
having so lately crossed the line.

The great feature of the southern seas is the multi-
tude of birds which inhabit it. Huge albatrosses,
molimorks (a smaller albatross), Cape hens, Cape
pigeons, parsons, boobies, whale birds, mutton birds,
and many more, wheel continually about the ship's
stern, sometimes in dozens, sometimes in scores, always
in considerable numbers. If a person takes two pieces
of pork and ties them together, leaving perbaps a yard
of string between the two pieces, and then throws them
into the sea, one albatross will catch hold of one
end, and another of the other, each bolts his own
end and then tugs and fights with his rival till one or
other has to disgorge his prize; we have not, however,
succeeded in catching any, neither have we tried the
above experiment ourselves. Albatrosses are not white;
they are grey, or brown with a white streak down the
back, and spreading a little into the wings. The under
part of the bird is a bluish-white. They remain without
moving the wing a longer time than any bird that I
have ever seen, but some suppose that each individual
feather is vibrated rapidly, though in very small space,
without any motion being imparted to the main pinions
of the wing. I am informed that there is a strong
muscle attached to each of the large plumes in their
wings. It certainly is strange how so large a bird
should be able to travel so far and so fast without any
motion of the wing. Albatrosses are often entirely
brown, but farther south, and when old, I am told,
they become sometimes quite white. The stars of the
southern hemisphere are lauded by some: I cannot see
that they surpass or equal those of the northern. Some,
of course, are the same. The southern cross is a very
great delusion. It isn't a cross. It is a kite, a kite
upside down, an irregular kite upside down, with only
three respectable stars and one very poor and very
much out of place. Near it, however, is a truly mys-
terious and interesting object called the coal sack : it
is a black patch in the sky distinctly darker than all
the rest of the heavens. No star shines through it.
The proper name for it is the black Magellan cloud.

We reached the Cape, passing about six degrees south
of it, in twenty-five days after crossing the line, a very
fair passage; and since the Cape we have done well
until a week ago, when, after a series of very fine runs,
and during as fair a breeze as one would wish to see,
we were some of us astonished to see the captain giving
orders to reef topsails. The royals were stowed, so
were the top-gallant-sails, topsails close reefed, mainsail
reefed, and just at 10.45 p.m., as I was going to bed,
I heard the captain give the order to take a reef in the
foresail and furl the mainsail; but before I was in bed
a quarter of an hour afterwards, a blast of wind came
up like a wall, and all night it blew a regular hurricane.
The glass, which had dropped very fast all day, and
fallen lower than the captain had ever seen it in the
southern hemisphere, had given him warning what was
coming, and he had prepared for it. That night we
ran away before the wind to the north, next day we lay
hove-to till evening, and two days afterwards the gale
was repeated, but with still greater violence. The
captain was all ready for it, and a ship, if she is a good
sea-boat, may laugh at any winds or any waves provided
she be prepared. The danger is when a ship has got
all sail set and one of these bursts of wind is shot out
at her; then her masts go overboard in no time.
Sailors generally estimate a gale of wind by the amount
of damage it does, if they don't lose a mast or get their
bulwarks washed away, or at any rate carry away a few
sails, they don't callit a gale, but a stiff breeze; if, how-
ever, they are caught even by comparatively a very
inferior squall, and lose something, they call it a gale.
The captain assured us that the sea never assumes a
much grander or more imposing aspect than that which
it wore on this occasion. He called me to look at it
between two and three in the morning when it was at
its worst; it was certainly very grand, and made a
tremendous noise, and the wind would scarcely let one
stand, and made such a roaring in the rigging as I never
heard, but there was not that terrific appearance that I
had expected. It didn't suggest any ideas to one's mind
about the possibility of anything happening to one. It
was excessively unpleasant to be rolled hither and
thither, and I never felt the force of gravity such a
nuisance before; one's soup at dinner would face one
at an angle of 45° with the horizon, it would look as
though immoveable on a steep inclined plane, and it
required the nicest handling to keep the plane truly
horizontal. So with one's tea, which would alternately
rush forward to be drunk and fly as though one were a
Tantalus, so with allone's goods, which would be seized
with the most erratic propensities. Still we were unable
to imagine ourselves in any danger, save that one flaxen-
headed youth of two-and-twenty kept waking up his
companion for the purpose of saying to him at intervals
during the night,'I say, N____, isn't it awful?' till finally
N____ silenced him with a boot. While on the subject
of storms I may add, that a captain, if at all a scientific
man, can tell whether he is in a cyclone (as we were)
or not, and if he is in a cyclone he can tell in what
part of it he is, and how he must steer so as to get out
of it. A cyclone is a storm that moves in a circle round
a calm of greater or less diameter; the calm moves
forward in the centre of the rotatory storm at the rate
of from one or two to thirty miles an hour. A large
cyclone 500 miles in diameter, rushing furiously round
its centre, will still advance in a right line, only very
slowly indeed. A small one 50 or 60 miles across will
progress more rapidly. One vessel sailed for five days
at the rate of 12, 13, and 14 knots an hour round one
of these cyclones before the wind all the time, yet in
the five days she had made only 187 miles in a straight
line. I tell this tale as it was told to me, but have not
studied the subjects myself. Whatever saloon passengers
may think about a gale of wind, I am sure that the poor
sailors who have to go aloft in it and reef topsails cannot
welcome it with any pleasure.


BEFORE continuing the narrative of my voyage, I must
turn to other topics and give you some account of my
life on board. My time has passed very pleasantly: I
have read a good deal; I have nearly finished Gibbon's
'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,' am studying
Liebig's 'Agricultural Chemistry,' and learning the
concertina on the instrument of one of my fellow-
passengers. Besides this, I have had the getting up
and management of our choir. We practise three or
four times a week; we chant the Venite, Glorias, and Te
Deums, and sing one hymn. I have two basses, two
tenors, one alto, and lots of girls, and the singing
certainly is better than you would hear in nine country
places out of ten. I have been glad by this means to
form the acquaintance of many of the poorer passengers.
My health has been very -good all the voyage: I have
not had a day's sea-sickness. The provisions are not
very first-rate, and the day after to-morrow, being
Christmas Day, we shall sigh for the.roast beef of Old
England, as our dinner will be somewhat of the
meagrest. Never mind! On the whole I cannot see
reason to find any great fault. We have a good ship,
a good captain, and victuals sufficient in quantity.
Everyone but myself abuses the owners like pick-
pockets, but I rather fancy that some of them will find
themselves worse off in New Zealand. When I come
back, if I live to do so (and I sometimes amass a
wonderful fortune in a very short time, and come back
fabulously rich, and do all sorts of things), I think I
shall try the overland route. Almost every evening
four of us have a very pleasant rubber, which never
gets stale. So you will have gathered that, though very
anxious to get to our journey's end, which, with luck, we
hope to do in about three weeks' time, still the voyage
has not proved at all the unbearable thing that some of
us imagined it would have been. One great amusement
I have forgotten to mention-that is, shufne-board, a
game which consists in sending some round wooden
platters along the deck into squares chalked and num-
bered from one to ten. This game will really keep one
quite hot in the coldest weather if played with spirit.

During the month that has elapsed since writing
the last sentence, we have had strong gales and long
tedious calms. On one of these occasions the captain
lowered a boat, and a lot of us scrambled over the ship's
side and got in, taking it in turns to row. The first
thing that surprised us was the very much warmer
temperature of the sea-level than that on deck. The
change was astonishing. I have suffered from a severe
cold ever since my return to the ship. On deck it was
cold, thermometer 46°; on the sea-level it was deliciously
warm. The next thing that surprised us was the way in
which the ship was pitching, though it appeared a dead
calm. Up she rose and down she fell upon a great
hummocky swell which came lazily up from the SW.,
making our horizon from the boat all uneven. On deck
we had thought it a very slight swell; in the boat, we
perceived what a heavy, humpy, ungainly heap of
waters kept rising and sinking all round us, sometimes
blocking out the whole ship, save the top of the main
royal, in the strangest way in the world. We pulled
round the ship, thinking we bad never in our lives seen
anything so beautiful as she then looked in the sunny
morning, when suddenly we saw a large ripple in the
waters not far off. At first the captain imagined it to
have been caused by a whale, and was rather alarmed,
but by and by it turned out to be nothing but a shoal
of fish. Then we made for a large piece of sea-weed
which we had seen some way astern. It extended some
ten feet deep, and was a huge, tangled, loose, floating
mass; among it nestled little fishes innumerable,
and as we looked down amid its intricate branches
through the sun-lit azure of the water, the effect was
beautiful. This mass we attached to the boat, and
with great labour and long time succeeded in getting
it up to the ship, the little fishes following behind
the sea-weed. It was impossible to lift it on board,
so we fastened it to the ship's side and came in to
luncheon. After lunch some ropes were arranged to
hoist the ladies in a chair over the ship's side and lower
them into the boat--a process which created much
merriment. Into the boat we put half a dozen of
champagne-a sight which gave courage to one or two
to brave the descent who had not previously ventured
on such a feat. Then the ladies were pulled round the
ship, and, when about a mile ahead of her, we drank the
champagne and had a regular jollification. Returning
to show them the sea-weed, the little fishes looked so
good that some one thought of a certain net wherewith
the doctor catches ocean insects, porpytas, clios, spinulas,
&c. With this we caught in half an hour, amid much
screaming, laughter, and unspeakable excitement, no
less than 250 of them. They were about five inches
long-funny little blue fishes with wholesome-looking
scales. We ate them next day, and they were excel-
lent. Some expected that we should have swollen or
suffered some bad effects, but no evil happened to us:
not but wbat these deep-sea fishes are frequently poison-
ous, but I believe that scaly fishes are always harmless.
We returned by half-past three, after a most enjoyable
day; but, as proof of the beat being much greater in
the boat, I may mention that one of the party lost the
skin from his face and arms, and that we were all much
sunburnt even in so short a time; yet one man who
bathed that day said he had never felt such cold water
in his life.

We are now (January 21) in great hopes of sighting
land in three or four days, and are really beginning to
feel near the end of our voyage: not that I can realise
this to myself; it seems as though I had always been on
board the ship, and was always going to be, and as if all
my past life had not been mine, but had belonged to
somebody else, or as though some one had taken mine
and left me his by mistake. I expect, however, that
when the land actually comes in sight we shall have
little difficulty in realising the fact that the voyage
has come to a close. The weather has been much
warmer since we have been off the coast of Australia,
even though Australia is some 10° north of our present
position. I have not, however, yet seen the thermometer
higher than 56° since we passed the Cape. Now we are
due south of the south point of Van Diemen's Land, and
consequently nearer land than we have been for some
time. We are making for the Snares, two high islets
about sixty miles south of Stewart's Ïsland, the southern-
most of the New Zealand group. We sail immediately
to the north of them, and then tura up suddenly.
The route we have to take passes between the Snares
and the Traps--two rather ominous-sounding names,
but I believe more terrible in name than in any other
particular.

January 22.-Yesterday at mid-day I was sitting
writing in my cabin, when I heard the joyful cry of
'Land!' and, rushing on deck, saw the swelling and
beautiful outline of the high land in Stewart's Island.
We had passed close by the Snares in the morning, but
the weather was too thick for us to see them, though the
birds flocked therefrom in myriads. We then passed
between the Traps, which the captain saw distinctly, one
on each side of him, from the main topgallant yard.
Land continued in sight till sunset, but since then it
has disappeared. To-day (Sunday) we are speeding
up the coast; the anchors are ready, and to-morrow
by early daylight we trust to drop them in the harbour
of Lyttelton. We have reason, from certain newspapers,
to believe that the mails leave on the 23rd of the month,
in which case I shall have no time or means to add a
single syllable.

January 26.-Alas for the vanity of human specu-
lation! After writing the last paragraph the wind fell
light, then sprung up foul, and so we were slowly driven
to the ENE. On Monday night it blew hard, and we had
close-reefed topsails. Tuesday morning at five it was
lovely, and the reefs were all shaken out; a light air
sprang up, and the ship, at 10 o'clock, had come up to
her course, when suddenly, without the smallest warn-
ing, a gale came down upon us from the SW. like a
wall. The men were luckily very smart in taking in
canvass, but at one time the captain thought he should
have had to cut away the mizenmast. We were reduced
literally to bare poles, and lay-to under a piece of tar-
paulin, six times doubled, and about two yards square,
fastened up in the mizen rigging. All day and night
we lay thus, drifting to leeward at three knots an hour.
In the twenty-four hours we had drifted sixty miles.
Next day the wind moderated; but at 12 we found that we
were eighty miles north of the peninsula and some 3° east
of it. So we set a little sail, and commenced forereach-
ing slowly on our course. Little and little the wind died,
and it soon fell dead calm. That evening (Wednesday),
some twenty albatrosses being congregated like a flock
of geese round the ship's stern, we succeeded in catching
some of them, the first we had caught on the voyage.
We would have let them go again, but the sailors think
them good eating, and begged them of us, at the same
time prophesying two days' foul wind for every albatross
taken. It was then dead calm, but a light wind sprang
up in the night, and on Thursday we sighted Bank's
Peninsula. Again the wind fell tantalisingly light, but
we kept drawing slowly toward land. In the beautiful
sunset sky, crimson and gold, blue, silver, and purple,
exquisite and tranquillising, lay ridge behind ridge, out-
line behind outline, sunlight behind shadow, shadow
behind sunlight, gully and serrated ravine. Hot puffs
of wind kept coming from the land, and there were
several fires burning. I got my arm-chair on deck, and
smoked a quiet pipe with the intensest satisfaction.
Little by little the night drew down, and then we
rounded the headlands. Strangely did the waves sound
breaking against the rocks of the harbour ; strangely,
too, looked the outlines of the mountains through the
night. Presently we saw a light ahead from a ship:
we drew slowly near, and as we passed you might have
heard a pin drop. 'What ship's that?' said a strange
voice.- 'The Roman Emperor,' said the captain. 'Are
you all well?' - 'All well.' Then the captain asked,
'Has the Robert Small arrived ?' --- 'No,' was the
answer, 'nor yet the Burmah.' You may imagine what
I felt. Then a rocket was sent up, and the pilot came
on board. He gave us a roaring republican speech on
the subject of India, China, &c. I rather admired
him, especially as he faithfully promised to send us
some fresh beefsteaks and potatoes for breakfast. A
north-wester sprung up as soon as we had dropt anchor :
had it commenced a little sooner we should have had
to put out again to sea. That night I packed a knap-
sack to go on shore, but the wind blew so hard that no
boat could put off till one o'clock in the day, at which
hour I and one or two others landed, and, proceeding to
the post office, were told there were no letters for us. I
afterwards found mine had gone hundreds of miles away
to a namesake-a cruel disappointment.


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 agree-
able 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
suffere.d from having a drunken or disagreeable com-
panion 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 com-
fort, 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
tríed 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 ex-
ceedingly 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.

The world begins to feel very small when one finds
one can get half round it in three months; and one
mentally determines to visit all these places before
coming back again, not to mention a good many more.

I search my diary in vain to find some pretermitted
adventure wherewith to give you a thrill, or, as good
Mrs. B. calls it, 'a feel;' but I can find none. The
mail is going; I will write again by the next.

Source:  A First Year in Canterbury by Samuel Butler, 1863


Converted to electronic form by Corey Woodw@rd


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