EN ROUTE

On Board, 26th August, 1890.

San Francisco was the same place, with the same curious feeling of its being cold while one felt the heat; but there was neither place, time nor anything for me; there were things to buy and replace—all sorts of things had been forgotten, and now more than ever I realize that it is well to be overloaded—even if I believe that later I should feel it. What I want I want badly, and San Francisco is not a place to get it in.

And then there was a pleasant club, with the usual hideous decoration, but very comfortable and with such a good table, and such a real one—meats that were meats, and fish that was fish, and fruits in quantity, and fruits are not fruits for pleasure unless they be in quantity; and good wine and champagne of a kind that is not ours; and a Mr. Cutler who took us there and talked of things he had done or would do, that were interesting, and the contrast between the smoothness of life there, and the apparent difficulties outside. I say apparent because many of them are based upon a feeling of indifference or “look out for yourself” in any event outside. Yes, the Union Club was a good waster of time. And then I am not yet well recovered at all from the strain of the beginning of the month; and I felt as if I had sea-legs and gait from the motion of the car. So that I shall say nothing of the great bay, nor its mountainsides, that look at this time as if they were nothing but those we have seen all along, but with the sea rolling in.

We got off on Saturday, not at noon as stated, but waiting for a couple of hours in dock, the little steamer filled with people and with very pretty girls, who, alas! were not to accompany us. But we have a circus troupe “à la Buffalo Bill”; an impresario with the nose and figure head of the “boy,” and his wife, or lady, the usual “variety blonde” to match, joining, like the telegraph, (through the seas and continent of America), furthest Australia and the Singing Hall of London. Long-haired cowboys see them off, one of them fair-haired and boyish and “sixty-two.” There are Indians, one long-haired, saturnine, and yet smiling, with the usual length of jaw and hair (so that his back runs up from his waist to his hat), who sits with some female, perhaps a dancer, and talks sentiment evidently, in his way, to my great delight—and hers, too, whatever she might say. They sit with one blanket around them, and he points gracefully, and puts things in her hair—and draws presents out of his pockets, wrapped up in paper, and puts them back to pull them out again. She sits against him, and smiles at him ironically, and laughs, and generally looks like a pretty cat lapping cream.

The cowboys meander about and go to the bar-room too frequently, especially one, a fair-haired one, who feels the first attack of sea-sickness, and sits with his head on his hand—and resents his comrades’ begging him to come below, telling them that they have mistaken the man he is, that he is a Pawnee medicine man, he is, and that he will wipe the floor with them; and then he subsides again—so that my expected row does not occur.

Then everybody subsides, even the cheerful young Englishmen and old Englishmen, and the middle-aged Englishmen, who pervade a good part of the ship and utter all their small stock of remarks with slowness and power. There are others—the teacher going back for her vacation, to the seminary at Hawaii—the young German I suspect of being an R.C. priest, and the Scotchman who has carefully talked for the last hour on the advantage of our system of “checking” baggage, which as he says allows you to go on without getting off at any station to see if the “guard” has the things all right. But as he remarks, for the hand luggage, a “mon” can take care of that himself, otherwise he would not be fit to take care of MONEY!!

But the weather is disappointing, very cold (so that ulsters are convenient), dark and grey, and there is a heavy coast sea, which I didn’t like until yesterday, since when it has been warm, and we have had blue sky in large patches through rents in the violet silveriness of the clouds. It is the exquisite clearness of the blue of the Pacific, a butterfly blue, laid on as it were between the clouds, and shading down to white faintness in the far distance, where the haze of ocean covers up the turquoise. The sea has the blue for a long time, but dark and reflecting the grey sky. This morning (Thursday) it has been blue like a sapphire, dark to look at except near by, but when you look down to it, and see it framed in the openings of the windows or the gangways, blue light pours out of it, and I realize that my blue sketches of four years ago are no exaggeration. When the clouds open somewhat, the blue light pours down and makes the shadows of the clouds violet, except when this fog against the warm sky looks red and rosy. Even the shadows of the blue sea look at moments reddish, when they reflect the opposite grey cloud. But we are not yet quite in the sun seas—this is not the season yet nor the place. There is all the time a veil of cloud, a veil so heavy as to make great cumulus clouds bunch out in extreme modelling. But when it is grey, all in silver—there is a light—a lilac grey, a silver, not known to the other side; and it is only when the distant smoke of the steamer goes over the grey clouds that I realize that they become like those of the north Atlantic.

This is Thursday afternoon. On Saturday at dawn, or before it, we shall sight at first the island of Molokai, the leper’s island, where Father Damien lived, then Oahu and its capes and Honolulu.

Friday, 29th August.

Last night the sun set in those silver tones that I associate with the Pacific and with Japan. The horizon was enclosed everywhere, but through it every here and there the pink and rose of sunset came out and in the east lit up the highest of the clouds in every variety of pink and lilac and purple and rose, shut in with grey. But the moon, “O Tsuki San,” had her turn—then I realized where we were. All was so dark that the horizon was quite veiled, but the light of the moon, in its full, and high up, poured down on what seemed a wall-embroidery of molten silver slanting to the horizon. Itself was partly wrapped in clouds or veils or wraps like those that protect some big jewel, and when unveiled or partly covered, it had the roundness—the nearness of some great crystal “with white fire laden.” The clearness was so great at places open through the clouds, that I thought I could see Jupiter’s satellites, and decided it was he by this additional glitter. There is no way of telling you all that the moon did, for she seemed to arrange the clouds, to place them about her or drive them away, to veil herself with one hand of cloud. It was like a great heavenly play—and played in such lovely air! If I could write on for pages I could only say that I had no idea of what the moon could be, nor of the persistence of colour that she could hold in all the silveriness.

When I went to bed, blue light poured in by reflection from the waves that had looked dark and colourless from the deck. It was the same contrast as by daylight, when the dark sea, isolated from the sky, takes a blue like Oriental satin, and is fired with light.

To-night again the moon gave a play—no longer in the great pomp of a simple spread of silver forms of cloud, but like an opera of colour and shadow, far in front of it, hung at times, a cloud so dense as to seem as dark as our bulwarks or “roofing”—but usually a cloud of blue, perhaps by contrast with the warmth of the clouds behind, all lit up and modelled and graded tier on tier. No Rembrandt could have more indication of grading and of dark than these clouds had in reality. No possible palette could approximate the degrees of dark and of light, for the moon, when she uncovered entirely, was the same transparent silver vase out of which poured light. It seemed impossible—the electric light alongside of us was no brighter apparently than the bright markings of the light on the deck, on the edges of the bulwarks, and on the brass of the railings. Imagine the electric light, in say our Fifth Avenue, really turned on everything around you. It is a stupid simile, but I wish you to believe in what I am saying. I took a coloured print into the moonlight to try, and could make out the colours—fairly of course—moonily, but there they were all, all but the violet. We could read, poorly, but we could read. But this is not the point, it is that we could see far away to the moon, and that it made a centre of light for every dark, for every half-tint, curtain upon curtain hung in front of it—all the foregrounds of sky you could wish for in that possibility of fog cloud.

Never shall I think again of the moon as a pale imitation. Of course its representation began when the sun was gone. Why it was like a sun one could look at without wincing, and canopied itself with colours that did not imitate, but were merely the iridescent spectrum that belongs to the great sun. These colours, by their arrangement in the prismatic sequence seemed to make more light, to arrange it and dispose it, as if art was recalling nature. All this must seem unintelligible. It would to me if I dared reread it. But this is at least what we came for—the moon and the Pacific.

To-morrow morning, Honolulu.

There was the profile of Oahu at seven this morning. Earlier, Molokai was a long cloud on our port. Now Oahu becomes clearer, and is distinctly violet or plum colour. The sea in front of it is blue, and dashed with white foam. Above, the clouds are in the more delicate greys and violets, and far up is a little rift of blue. To the right a large white triangular patch—an extinct volcano cone. Near the base of the mountains all is mist.

It is now 7:30. Birds, swallows, and sea-mews meet us; the swallows came early this morning. But until yesterday, for two days, there was no life except the flying fish.

We are very close, so close that I cannot draw except in panorama. All looks like cinders as we go on. Lovely cloud effects on the hills—rainbows—and the furthest edge of everything in this promontory daring all.

Then, as we round this, with our first turn perhaps since we left, we can see more mountains and hills—for the first time, right on the blue sea, a fringe of green (not yellowish)—the first time I have seen a fringe of green to deep blue sea.

Later we see beneath the great hills or mountains, that look like cinders, green bushes of trees, and houses looking pretty enough and cool—but we are still far off—and then behind this grey mountain with fringe of green we begin to feel Honolulu.

Big mountains, green valleys and slopes far back, a fringe of trees, some large buildings, a steamer’s smoke from some place, here and there masts—all this spread for miles, like an edging. As the space unfolds we see an immensely long beach (Waikiki) running at the base of the hills around a bay, and far off in the haze many masts. “White water” edges the sea everywhere, even before the line of ships. The water has calmed on which we now slip. There is no motion to it; no more, apparently, than would make a fringe of foam to a lake. A narrow channel in the surf, and we see the shipping and the port: steamships and sailing vessels, an English and an American warship, and we are in, and I am interrupted for the keys of the trunks.