The steerage passengers are mostly Chinamen returning to California after a visit home. Special accommodations are fitted for them. Not infrequently the Chinese in large numbers take passage on the Pacific Mail to be landed at Honolulu. This will give the traveller a day in port, when he should go on shore to enjoy Sandwich Island hospitality, and see the Hoola-hoola—a native dance that must be prearranged and paid for, since it is interdicted by the Government because of its supposed demoralizing influence—on the native. After a voyage of 2,000 miles in 7 days to the northeast, the steamer enters the Golden Gate, and passes up to the city of San Francisco. A six-day run by railroad, and the traveller is once again back in New York.
The whole distance travelled by the way described is, in round numbers, 23,000 miles, and the time taken to do this may have been but 80 or 90 days, or more; the longer the better, for it requires plenty of time to enjoy a trip around the world. It also requires money. About $1,000 would be necessary for passage money alone; double this amount would be sufficient to take the traveller in comfort and ease, and upon his arrival home he would consider it money admirably spent.
The traveller reaching San Francisco by the above highway of circumnavigation can further add to his knowledge of strange countries by selecting a sea journey to New York, instead of a land run by railroad across the continent. To go by sea passage must be secured on board a Pacific Mail coasting steamer, the only line running to Mexico, Central America, and Panama. Steaming down the beautiful coast of California, stopping at picturesque harbors in Mexico, anchoring off roadsteads of Central America, taking on and off a few passengers, an Englishman, a German, an American, handling cargo—such is the rough log of the cruise of 20 days and 3,200 miles until the splendid Bay of Panama is reached. The eight or ten ports of call are better seen from the ship than from the shore. The enchantment of distance gives way upon close examination to pity and disgust, for dirt, indigence, and a total ignorance of how to live decently are noticeable everywhere.
At Panama two widely different routes leading to the United States are offered: the one goes over the Isthmus of Panama by rail and thence to New York by sea; the other stretches away down the west coast of South America, through the Straits of Magellan, and up the Atlantic highway.