Two years before this collapse of a great idea, I left Australia for Japan, by way of Java, Singapore, and China, with high hopes. I had visions, which were to accompany me for a year or two more, and then I had to abandon them and turn my attention to other fields. From Melbourne, I sailed on the Dashing Wave. Has it ever occurred to any one who writes or thinks of the old days of sailing vessels, those winged ships, that the very names of boats have changed, indicating the transformation from romance to reality, from poetry to mere prose and work-a-day business? In those days we had beautiful and suggestive names for ships, just as we ought to try to find beautiful and suggestive names for all truly beautiful and lovable things. Now we send out our City of Paris, or St. Louis, or St. Paul, or the Minneapolis, or the Astoria, or Kentucky, or Blaamanden, or Rotterdam, or Ryndam, or Noordam. Then we had such names as Flying Cloud, the clipper that shortened the distance between the ends of the world; the Sovereign of the Seas, the Monarch of the Ocean, the Flying Arrow, the Sea Eagle. The Dashing Wave, Captain Fiske, carried me to Batavia in twenty-six days. We were accompanied, for a portion of the trip, by the Flying Arrow.
At Anjer, in the Straits of Sunda, the Malays came off to the ship in their little boats with provisions of all sorts to sell. Every one of them had letters of recommendation, as they thought, from the English captains and officers who had previously traded with them; but these letters, if they could have been translated for their possessors, would have been instantly cast into the sea and a general riot perhaps would have followed. One of the letters read something like this: "If this black thief brings any eggs to sell to you, don't buy them, as they are always rotten. He may also try to sell you a rooster, but don't buy it, as it is the same cock that crew when Peter denied Jesus." Of course everybody on the ship roared with laughter as each letter was handed up to us and read aloud for the edification of all. The simple Malays guffawed loudly in their boats, thinking that we were heartily pleased with them and their wares. When next I passed through the Sunda Straits, Krakatoa had been at work in eruption and had completely changed the face of the coast, and Anjer itself and the little island it stood on were gone.