They are very well for carrying freight, because they are beasts of
burden, but not for carrying travellers, unless they are mere birds of
passage like our Yankee tourists, who want to have it to say I was
'thar.' I hate them. The decks are dirty; your skin and clothes are
dirty; and your lungs become foul; smoke pervades everythin', and now
and then the condensation gives you a shower of sooty water by way of
variety, that scalds your face and dyes your coat into a sort of
pepper-and-salt colour.
"You miss the sailors, too. There are none on board--you miss the nice
light, tight-built, lathy, wiry, active, neat, jolly crew. In their
place you have nasty, dirty, horrid stokers; some hoisting hot cinders
and throwing them overboard (not with the merry countenances of
niggers, or the cheerful sway-away-my-boys expression of the Jack Tar,
but with sour, cameronean-lookin' faces, that seem as if they were
dreadfully disappointed they were not persecuted any longer--had no
churches and altars to desecrate, and no bishops to anoint with the
oil of hill-side maledictions as of old), while others are emerging
from the fiery furnaces beneath for fresh air, and wipe a hot dirty
face with a still dirtier shirt sleeve, and in return for the nauseous
exudation, lay on a fresh coat of blacking; tall, gaunt wretches, who
pant for breath as they snuff the fresh breeze, like porpouses, and
then dive again into the lower regions.
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