Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/22

 up this afternoon very suddenly, but in five minutes we were admiring the rainbow that accompanied it.

We have a wonderful country in the United States, but we pay very little attention to ships. I heard the captain say at dinner today that the United States sends only twelve passenger ships to foreign countries, the "Sonoma" being one of them, whereas England sends eleven thousand. Germany comes next with five thousand, and little Japan has five hundred. Our decline in shipping began with the Civil War; we have given our attention to building up the country, and neglected ship-building. The captain says that many of our rich men are interested in foreign ship lines, and that they impudently maintain a lobby in Washington to fight every measure intended to benefit domestic shipping. Our financiers will in time gain control of many of the big foreign ship companies; this, in the captain's judgment, will be the final solution of the problem.

The Atlantic ocean is small compared with the great bulk of the Pacific. Immense fields of water never parted by the cut-water of a ship or steamer lie between the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn. Perhaps half of the Pacific is as yet unexplored and uncharted. In the lonely South Seas lie the Samoa islands, two of which belong to the United States. The "Sonoma" stopped at one of these on the 29th, and we found the harbor at Pago Pago exceedingly pretty. The captain said we should reach Pago Pago at 4, and at 3:50 we went ashore. The "Sonoma" makes