Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/125

 —I have spent this day in bed, seasick. Early this morning we ran into a rough sea, and not one passenger in twenty appeared at breakfast. Fortunately, the three others in my room are very polite gentlemen, but this did not prevent them from being ill, and four sick men in a room nine by ten feet, with one small window, and that closed, is not pleasant. In our room there is not so much as a chair to sit on, and not as many hooks as one man requires for his clothing, on retiring; I have no hooks at all in my berth, and, when I went to bed, was compelled to pile my clothes on the bed, or under it. There is one washbowl for four men, and, after two have used it, the water in this runs out. And this on the largest and finest ship sailing out of New Zealand. And I paid $5 in addition to the usual tariff, in order that I might have better than the average first-class passenger. I have never before seen four persons placed in a room on a steamship; it occasionally happens that the sofa is used for a third passenger, when a ship is badly crowded, but on the Atlantic this is rare; passengers won't stand it. But here, six are often placed in first-class cabins, and there does not seem to be much protest. The newspapers are always abusing the railroads, which actually supply very good accommodations; I wonder they do not have something to say about the steamships. The two parlors on the "Maunganui" must be 100 feet long, and as broad as the ship itself; yet they are rarely occupied by more than a dozen, while four people are forced to occupy a room nine by ten. The smoking-room is a fine apartment, and the halls are wide and airy, but the cabins are disgrace