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FROM SYDNEY TO ENGLAND viâ PANAMA.

FINDING that the Panama route to our Australasian colonies is once more occupying the attention of the mercantile community and the government, it has occurred to me that the memoranda of a voyage across the Pacific, in the only steamer that has as yet made the passage between Sydney and Panama, may at this present time prove not uninteresting to many of the readers of Bentley. At the same time, in order to render the narrative more attractive to the general reader, I shall interlard my journal with various reminiscences of the voyage, and sundry adventures both by flood and field. For it is not all sea by this route, the narrow neck of land that separates the Pacific from the Atlantic affording (in those days, at least, before the railway was completed) abundant scope for adventures by field.

Well, then, on the evening of Wednesday, the 10th of May, 1854, one hundred and seventy passengers of all classes embarked on board the American steam-ship Golden Age, then lying in the harbour of Port Jackson, Sydney, and bound for Panama, via Tahiti. Owing to the failure of the shipping-master to supply the requisite number of handsthe original crew having unceremoniously levanted to the diggings-the steamer was detained till ten o'clock the next morning, the captain having in the mean time secured a few land-lubbers, with whose aid he resolved to prosecute his voyage without further delay. And well was it that he had a Pacific Ocean before him, for none of the crew had ever been at sea before; so that we were dependent entirely on the engines, and engine-men, and the good-nature of King Neptune.

As the steamer moved majestically down the beautiful harbour of Port Jackson, she fired a salute of fourteen guns, but in honour of whom or of what I could never ascertain. I have no doubt, however, that many of the peaceable inhabitants were astonished, and not a few mightily alarmed, as they were in daily expectation of a visit from some vagrant Russian frigate that had been in the harbour before the war broke out, and was known not to be far off. At eleven we were outside the Heads, and off for Tahiti, with a fair wind and fine weather. Towards evening the wind freshened from the southward, and but few made their appearance in the saloon for dinner. Although the weather was by no means bad-in fact, the sea during the whole voyage from Sydney to England, on both sides of the Isthmus, was as smooth as a mill-pond -yet it was several days before the whole of the passengers ventured to show themselves outside their respective state-rooms; but when they did turn out, what a motley group they were! In the first cabin we had one hundred and twenty-one passengers. Amongst them were French, Germans, Hungarians, Greeks, Australians, Yankees, English, Scotch, and Irish. There was a Roman Catholic priest, an Anglo-Catholic ditto, and a bearded prophet, the founder of a sect called Israelites. We had an ex-governor of a colony, an ex-police magistrate, two ex-consuls, two or three ex-skippers, an ex-publican or two, an ex-ostler, an ex-chambermaid, a doctor with a wife (not his own), another doctor with a lady, no wife at all. In short, all sorts of gentry-some who had been lucky at the dig

gings, who were coming home to enjoy their otium cum dig., as well as others who had come in for the nuggets at second-hand-to wit, the ex-publicans, and such like. There was but a very small sprinkling of respectable and honest folks.

În spite, however, of this heterogeneous mass thus thrown together, there was no quarrelling, every one consorting with his own set, or keeping himself to himself as much as he pleased. One of the Hungarians, a nobleman, had been to the Melbourne diggings, where he had been fortunate. On his way from the diggings to Melbourne he had been attacked in open daylight by a cowardly ruffian, who shot him through the right arm, but failed in his attempt to rob him of his gold. The gallant Hungarian, however, was not fortunate enough to save his arm, which had to be amputated. Notwithstanding this loss, however, he was on his way to the war, expecting to obtain a commission under General Guyon, who had command of a large Turkish army, and hoping earnestly that he would find his old enemies, the Austrians, in arms against the Turks.

But now to the voyage. On the morning of Friday, the 12th of May, we sighted Lord Howe's Islands, and passed within a few miles to the northward of them. Although there is very little to excite interest in the general appearance of the islands, yet the sight of land at all is an agreeable break in a monotonous voyage like ours. We gazed at them from the deck till the high peak and all was out of sight. There is a small settlement on one of the islands, containing about thirty inhabitants. They had been visited a short time previously by H.M.S. Calliope, and had gladly exchanged potatoes, which they grow in great quantities, for articles of wearing apparel or dollars. The ladies, however, could not be supplied by a man-of-war with cast-off petticoats or dresses, and would have to wait the arrival of some American ship with a cargo of notions, or for the visit of some whaler. Several children were baptised by the chaplain of the frigate, whose ministrations had been received most gratefully.

On Sunday, the 14th, divine service was performed by the English clergyman, a chaplain in the navy, about seventy-five per cent. of the passengers attending, many of whom being English, or Irish, or Scotch, were scandalised to find that his reverence used an American Prayerbook, and in the Litany prayed for the President of the United States, because (I presume) he supposed himself and his congregation to be on quasi-American ground, from the fact of their being on board an American vessel, commanded by a captain in the American navy.

On Monday, the 15th, we passed within three miles of Norfolk Island, a perfect garden of Eden to look at, but at that time a hell upon earth, being the prison-home of the most desperate of the Botany Bay and Vandemonian convicts. It has since become the peaceful residence of the Pitcairn Islanders, descendants of the notorious mutineers of the Bounty.

On the 17th we crossed over into west longitude, and changed our time accordingly, having two Wednesdays in that week, and two 17th days of May; for the why and the wherefore of this, the reader is referred to Omoo, or Typee, where, by the way, he will find a very

amusing and most accurate description of some of the South Sea Islands and their inhabitants.

On the 18th we sighted a whaler, with a fish alongside, and boiling the oil, one of the boats being out after another. A second whaler passed within hailing distance; out eighteen months; a bundle of Sydney papers, thrown overboard for them, was picked up with avidity. From the 21st to the 24th the trade-wind blew fiercely, but as it was nearly right ahead, it did not affect the motion of the ship to any great extent, nor did the sea get up; but yet we were very uncomfortable notwithstanding.

Owing to the loss of a nozzle-pipe (such was the lucid explanation of the captain), the steam, which is usually blown off from the side of the ship, through an aperture a little above the water-mark, and which ought to have been directed downwards by the pipe aforesaid, was blown back upon us by the wind, and drenched everything on deck and in the open state-rooms with a shower of condensed salt spray. Slight as the motion of the vessel was while the strong trade wind lasted, it was quite enough to upset the equanimity of many of the passengers, who were by no means good sailors. None felt more inconvenience than Mrs. G., the wife of one of the ex-publicans, and who managed to henpeck her lord and master to perfection.

On the afternoon of the 21st we passed along the shores of RoroTonga, the natives all turning out on the beach, far and near, to gaze at the novel sea-monster; for it was the first steamer they had seen. The mission-house, with its whitewashed walls, and the large church, with its square tower, looked very well, peeping out from beneath the cocoa-nut trees. To those who had never seen a tropical island before, the sight was a most delightful one.

On Wednesday, the 24th of May, we anchored in Papiti Bay, the port of Tahiti. The entrance is somewhat dangerous, being a very narrow gap through the coral reef, which, as is generally the case in those seas, entirely surrounds the island.

In the evening we celebrated the Queen's birthday, and kept up the toasting and speechifying till a late hour. The champagne was furnished by a few of the passengers who had never before crossed the line, being the usual tax imposed upon novices by the emissaries of King Neptune. Shaving with a rusty hoop would have been the alternative!

The greatest distance steamed in one day was two hundred and eighty miles; a capital day's run, considering that we had a strong current as well as the wind against us.

We had thus been fourteen days in accomplishing the distance between Sydney and Tahiti, rather more than four thousand miles. Of course the return voyage, with wind and current both favourable, could be made in much less time. But of this more anon.

The view of the semi-circular beach, on entering the harbour of Tahiti, is very pretty. The French governor's house, the large military bakehouse, barracks, magazines, consul's houses (English and American) with their respective flags, as well as the queen's palace with the Tahitian flag, exhibiting the tricolor in the corner, in acknowledgment of the French protectorate; and besides all these, sundry other European buildings of all shapes and sizes, with the less pretending, but yet picturesque, native huts in the background, peeping out timidly from under the majestic

cocoa-nut trees that wave their graceful heads high over all-the branching bread-fruit trees-the bushy guavaes, that grow in wild profusion all round-the hundreds of trees and shrubs peculiar to the tropics-the magnificent hills in the background, towering some of them to the height of nine thousand feet above the level of the sea, and covered with the brightest evergreen trees and bushes to the very highest summits-altogether form a view such as is not to be seen every day even in the South Seas, and, when once seen, not soon to be forgotten. Add to all this the appearance in the main street, which runs along the beach, of natives and French, the latter mostly soldiers in their gay uniforms, marching along to relieve guard, with the band playing the natives, at least the lady portion of them, walking, or lolling, or lying at full length in their loose flowing dresses of gaily coloured cotton-the men in their canoes surrounding the ship, and one and all, in their delight at seeing so huge a vessel, screaming and jabbering at the full pitch of their voices, quite incapable of attending to the sale of their fruits, &c., with which their frail canoes were laden to the gunwale-and you have some idea of our first glimpse of Tahiti.

Near us lay a small French frigate, the Moselle, senior officer's ship; a corvette, the Prévoyante; a pretty little man-of-war steamer, the Duroc; besides two or three men-of-war schooners. None of them appeared to be in good fighting condition; they were very dirty, and some of the guns were actually rusty. The whole of them put together did not seem likely to do much damage to the crack Russian frigate known to be somewhere in those seas-even though backed up by two land batteries : one situated to the extreme right of the harbour on a projecting headland; the other, a crazy one of four (dismounted!) guns, on a little island near the mouth of the harbour. I can only say that if the French squadron at Petropaulovski was composed of any of the vessels we saw in Tahiti, the result of the engagement need not be wondered at.

Most of the other vessels in harbour consisted of merchantmen laden with coals for the Golden Age. They had been sent on from Sydney several weeks before we left. We had not been anchored an hour before a couple of colliers were lashed alongside, and commenced discharging their cargoes into the spacious hold of the steamer. Sixty native men were procured by the kindness of the French governor, who did everthing in his power to assist the agents of the ship, and by the aid of these, working in two watches, half by day and half by night, the coaling operations were completed in four days. Notwithstanding their well-earned character for laziness, the men on this occasion worked like galley-slaves, discharging in the time I have mentioned no less than 1200 tons of coals.

The day after we arrived was wet and disagreeable, as always is the case in rainy weather in the tropics-the heat, and the steam, and the pouring rain being all mightily unpleasant in their way. However, after having been cooped up on ship-board for a fortnight, a walk on shore was not to be resisted. Accordingly, parties of us, by fours and fives, might be seen loitering about the streets, or in the market-for there is a market even in Tahiti for pigs, fowls, beef, mutton, yams, potatoes (sweet), breadfruit, oranges, &c. &c.-or strolling along the Broom-road, a nice carriage drive or horse road made years ago for the convenience of the missionaries, in going from one preaching station to another. The cocoa-nut trees

bread-fruit trees, which grow very plentifully-orange-trees, which seemed to grow everywhere spontaneously, and belong to nobody in particular, each laden with bushels upon bushels of ripe luscious oranges as big as one's head-the vi-apples, in appearance like a magnum-bonum plum, but twice as large-the flowers, shrubs, huts, and, above all, the men, women, and children, had each and all to be gazed at by those who had never before been in one of the islands of the Pacific, or seen savages (except diggers) in any stage of civilisation; and all returned to the ship each night under the impression that Tahiti was a perfect paradise on earth, and not a few were half inclined to stay behind and end their days there with some Fay-a-way-not half so charming, however, as she of Typee as a partner for life. One passenger actually did remain behind, not being able to tear himself away from so charming a place!

Having seen so many savages in the islands of the Pacific, from the half-converted Christian down to the very wildest cannibal, I could not fail to remark how much the men of Tahiti must have degenerated since they have become acquainted with their highly-civilised French protectors. They had not a vestige of the bold, upright, majestic strut of their untamed brethren, but slunk about like a cowed and subdued people, clad, too, in all manner of uncouth, civilised habiliments-a dirty, lowcrowned straw hat, with a narrow brim, crowning the whole figure. The real genuine savage, who wears the dress that Father Adam did before the Fall, walks along most majestically, in full consciousness that he is a veritable lord of the creation-every inch a gentleman-his manners. perfectly polite-his every movement most dignified and graceful.

It is a curious fact in natural history, and one difficult to account for, that when once the white man sets foot on the black fellow's hunting grounds, the latter first begins to degenerate, and then gradually disappears from before the white man's path. It is so at Tahiti. It is more conspicuous in the Sandwich Islands, where the population has been reduced within the last eighty years from 150,000 (Captain Cook's estimate) to less than a tenth part of that number. The first stage of this process has already begun to work in Tahiti; the last is only a question. of time. What a pity it is that such a fine race of people should be destined to die out in the wretched way they do! but it is evidently the

dark man's doom.

But to cease moralising and return to my journal. On Sunday, as they were too busy on board the steamer for service, several of us went to the meeting-house on shore, where the service was conducted by the Rev. Mr. Hunt, who had been thirty years at that place. The sermon was not bad, but as for the rest of the service, the singing and the prayer, the less said about it the better. No one seemed to join in the prayer, which was extempore, or take any interest in it, not even so much as making it their own by a single "Amen" at the end. Such a thing as common prayer or public worship seemed to form no part of the service. The church, if it could be called so, was evidently meant to be a house of preaching, and not a "house of prayer." Some of the native women appeared with bonnets of a very ancient date, and coal-skuttle pattern; but whether they wore them on Sundays for ornament, or by way of penance, I never could ascertain. Possibly the missionaries made them. a source of profit, as I have actually known them to do in other islands,