THE MIDDLE PASSAGE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2661, 15 March 1905, Page 71

THE MIDDLE PASSAGE.

-er. By a BakkePv.

The "horrors of the middle passage," as the i crossing of the tioubied Trr.ters of the English ' Channel has been termed, are not no-.\- so grim and so lugubrious as in the days when those , small, lively steamers, the Wav 3, Foam, Breeze, and others, so well remembered by travellers, tediously lumbered up to the summit of the great waves of the Channel, plunged down their sloping steeps, and then y.-ith a twisting, heaving lureh — more disturbing to the equanimity of those whose physical susceptibilities precluded them from participating in the pleasures of an invigorating voyage than either a bona fide roll or pitch creaked and trembled from stern to stern as though each lurch would rend the good ship asunder, or wrench apart her staunch old timbers. * Many a tragi-comic melodrama has been enacted on board those little tossing steamers : dearest friends who on terra firrna would almost give their life for each other now become apparently hopelessly estranged, and utterly regardless of each other's sorrows ; the sprightly and vivacious lose all their gaiety and hilarity and sink into a dismal gloom ; and the sparkling wit is transmogrified into a ghastly and dolorous hypochondriac. The floor of the cabin is like a battlefield, strewn with groaning and writhing men clutching at anything which will anchor them to the .spot they have chosen ; while doleful wails and moans surge in ever-increasing volume from all sides. Here, at the bows, is a newly-married couple starting on their honeymoon. He has carefully adjusted her rug and wraps, and otherwise done his best to make her comfortable, and the enamoured pair are engaged in animated and evidently most endearing conversation. Soon, however, this flags, and a,' solemn silence rapid'y ensues. And now, although the day before he had solemnly promised to love and cherish her, in sickness and in health, until death did them part, that promise is utterly thiovrn to the winds, and soon he ignores his pallid bride altogether and allows a sailor to carry her off and deposit her under the care of a stewardess down below, without a word of remonstrance, and without even an attempt to help her. Or^ here is one who a quarter of an hour before looked upon his fellows with a contemptuous stare, as if the whole world was his private property, now transformed ir.+o a hag-gard, crouching wreck, a hopeless picture of abject misery. But soon the vessel arrive 5*5 * in smooth water, all their woes are forgotten, and they resume those ti=ual chaiacteribtics which the gambols of the little steamer had so rudely tiansformed. i Surely all this is a reminder of ourselves. \

Tossed about by the billows and storms of life-journey is ended we shall enter the haven life, if by the never-iefused aid of the Hoy of lest and eternal ioys But, aias' there Spirit we have the out_tr?tc!ie<>, arc others who, refusing-, make *hip"/recxC s-cdirud hand of the Saviour who so lo 1 ui^ly of their hfo. and pro stiandec"! on the lc-alm boie the pu.nshment of our sins, when our oT black, grinding rerciise