oubtless carry us safely to the end of
our voyage,--going steadily, as she does, at the rate of about eight
knots an hour. And as the distance between Honolulu and the American
coast is about 2100 miles, we shall probably make the voyage in about
ten days.

On the eighth day after leaving Honolulu, an incident occurred which
made a startling impression on me. While we were laughing and talking
in the cabin--kept down there by the rain--we were told that a poor
man, who had been ailing since we left port, had breathed his last. It
seemed that he had some affection of the gullet which prevented his
swallowing food. The surgeon on board did not possess the necessary
instrument to enable him to introduce food into his stomach, so that
he literally died of starvation. He occupied the berth exactly
opposite mine, and though I knew he was ill, I had no idea that his
end was so near. He himself; however, had been aware of it, and
anxiously wished that he might survive until he reached San Francisco,
where his wife was to meet him at the landing. But it was not to be;
and his sudden decease gave us all a great shock.

We had our breakfast and dinner that day whilst the body was lying in
the cabin. We heard the carpenter busy on the main deck knocking
together a coffin for its reception. Every time he knocked a nail in,
I thought of the poor dead fellow who lay beside us. I began to
speculate as to the various feelings with which passengers land in a
new place. Some are mere passing visitors like myself, bent on seeing
novel sights; some are going thither, full of hope, to make a new
settlement in life; some are returning home, expecting old friends
waiting on the pier-head to meet and welcome them. But there are sad
meetings, too; and here there will be an anxious wife waiting at the
landing-place, only to receive the dead body of her husband.

But a truce to moralizing; for we are approaching the Golden Gate. I
must now pack up my things, and finish my log. I have stuck to it at
all hours and in all weathers; jotted down little bits from time to
time in the intervals of sea-sickness, toothache, and tic douloureux;
written under a burning tropical sun, and amidst the drizzle and
down-pour of the North Pacific; but I have found pleasure in keeping
it up, because I know that it will be read with pleasure by those for
whom it is written, and it will serve to show that amidst all my
wanderings, I have never forgotten the Old Folk