Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/178

 combination of its elements, or whether some germ or other made a hazardous journey through space from another planet enwrapped in the casing of a meteorite, are questions upon which no light has yet been thrown by scientific observation or speculation. The majority of scholars believe that life originated at the bottom of shallow waters, or on the surface of the seas. Several naturalists believe that some free-swimming form of jelly-fish was the ancestor, and that from this simple start came, by millions of years of evolution, every living thing.

—The tallest man I have ever seen in private life turns out to be a clergyman of the Church of England, and early this morning he conducted holy communion in the music-room, which was attended by about a dozen women. At 11 he held another service, which attracted twenty-five or thirty. Both services were announced by tolling the dinner-gong like a church-bell. We call the tall man our pastor, and he will seem quite like it after we have been associated with him all the way to Durban. I have spent Sunday on three other ships, but no religious services were held Every Englishman, before he has known an American long, refers to the amusing manner in which Americans eat green corn off the cob. I suppose that seeing a room full of Americans eating corn off the cob is a funny sight that only foreigners can appreciate. An Englishman who sits at our table, and who lives at Johannesburg, says roasting-ears are widely grown in South Africa, and that