Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/18

 plate. Every-day life looks too theatrical, too full of artistic and decorative effects, to be actual and serious, and streets and shops seem set with deliberately studied scenes and carefully posed groups. Half consciously the spectator waits for the bell to ring and the curtain to drop.

The voyage across the North Pacific is lonely and monotonous. Between San Francisco and Yokohama hardly a passing sail is seen. When the Pacific Mail Steamship Company established the China line their steamers sailed on prescribed routes, and outward and homeward-bound ships met regularly in mid-ocean. Now, when not obliged to touch at Honolulu, the captains choose their route for each voyage, either sailing straight across from San Francisco, in 37° 47', to Yokohama, in 35° 26' N., or, following one of the great circles farther north, thus lessen time and distance. On these northern meridians the weather is always cold, threatening, or stormy, and the sea rough; but the steadiness of the winds favors this course, and persuades the ship’s officers to encounter wet decks, torn sails, destructive seas, and the grumbling of passengers. Dwellers in hot climates suffer by the sudden transition to polar waters, and all voyagers dislike it. Fortunately, icebergs cannot float down the shallow reaches of Behring Strait, but fierce winds blow through the gaps and passes in the Aleutian Islands.

Canadian Pacific steamers, starting on the 49th parallel, often pass near the shores of Attu, the last little fragment of earth swinging at the end of the great Aleutian chain. The shelter which those capable navigators, Mrs. Leeks and Mrs. Aleshine, had the luck to find in their memorable journey, mariners declare to be Midway Island, a circular dot of land in the great waste, with a long, narrow, outlying sand-bar, where schooners have been wrecked, and castaways rescued after months 2