Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/481

 Italy except vegetables and fruit; I wonder where the wheat comes from with which they make macaroni? The Italians say American flour makes better bread than the Italian flour, but inferior macaroni. The Italians are poor, as a rule, but nearly all of them are fat; particularly the women. The poor people of Italy do not eat meat once a week; the Italian emigrants on the ship get it twice a day. But they are very wasteful of it, and complain as much as though they had always been accustomed to the very best. One of the officers says that on the last trip, the ship was compelled to bring back twenty-two emigrants who failed to pass the examination in New York. The charge against one man was that he had been a professional beggar. This man made a great deal of trouble during the voyage to New York; he was always finding fault with the food, although it was abundant. I asked the officer why the ship gave the emigrants so much food that they threw it overboard; his reply was that the Italian commissioner on board insisted on a liberal supply, and the captain was at his mercy. The emigrants are pretty well crowded in their sleeping quarters; one hundred and fifty men sleep in one room, in a bed which runs up in broad tiers. If the owners of the English ships running between Australia and New Zealand ever hear of this, they will die of mortification because of their moderation in putting only four in a room We had a moving-picture show last night, with the explanatory lecture in French The barber who shaves me every morning says he has been going to sea a good many years, but never started on a voyage on Friday; that a ship never leaves its