NEW YORK, HUDSON RIVER, AND NIAGARA FALLS 4
THE AMERICAN LAKES, AND THE CENTRES OF LEARNING, FASHION, AND GOVERNMENT 26
COACHING THROUGH THE NORTH ISLAND OF NEW ZEALAND; ITS HOT LAKES AND GEYSERS 102
THE SOUTH ISLAND OF NEW ZEALAND; ITS ALPS AND MOUNTAIN LAKES 146
AUSTRALIA--NEW SOUTH WALES, AND QUEENSLAND 181
WITHIN THE BARRIER REEF, THROUGH TORRES STRAITS TO BATAVIA 200
THE METROPOLIS OF INDIA AND ITS HIMALAYAN SANATORIUM 250
PAGE The White Terrace, Hot Lakes, New Zealand _Frontispiece_
Parliament Buildings, Ottawa _to face_ 22
The Royal Gorge of the Arkansas _to face_ 58
Government House, Melbourne _to face_ 165
Zig-zag on Railway, Blue Mountains _to face_ 192
The Darjeeling and Himalayan Railway " 263
[Illustration: ROUTE MAP TO "FORTY THOUSAND MILES OVER LAND AND WATER" BY MRS. HOWARD VINCENT.
FORTY THOUSAND MILES OVER LAND AND WATER.
Lat. 43° 15´ N., Long. 50° 12´ W. All is intensely quiet. The revolution even of the screw has ceased. We are wrapped in a fog so dense that we feel almost unable to breathe.
We shudder as we look at the white pall drawn closely around us. The decks and rigging are dripping, and everything on board is saturated with moisture. We feel strangely alone. When hark! A discordant screech, a hideous howl belches forth into the still air, to be immediately smothered and lost in the fog. It is the warning cry of the fog-horn.
[Illustration: "That horrible fog-horn!"]
We are on board the White Star steamer _Germanic_, in mid-Atlantic, not far off the great ice-banks of Newfoundland.
It was on Wednesday, the 2nd of July, that we left London, and embarked from Liverpool on the 3rd.
I need not describe the previous bustle of preparation, the farewells to be gone through for a long absence of nine months, the little crowd of kind friends who came to see us off at Euston, nor our embarkation and our last view of England.
I remember how dull and gloomy that first evening on board closed in, and how a slight feeling of depression was not absent from us.
The next morning we were anchoring in Queenstown Harbour, and whilst waiting for the arrival of the mails in the afternoon we went by train to Cork.
The mails were on board the _Germanic_ by four o'clock. We weighed anchor, and our voyage to America had commenced. The often advertised quick passages across the Atlantic are only reckoned to and from Queenstown. The sea-sick traveller hardly sees the point of this computation of time, for the coasts of "ould Ireland" are as stormy and of as much account as the remainder of the passage.