The P. & O. Pocket Book

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1908. Excerpt: ... UNDER THE SOUTHERN CROSS By Beatrice Gbimshaw Author of From Fiji to the Cannibal Islands; In Strange South Seas, etc. Travel is the dearest wish of almost every stay-athome. Travel is the realised dream of every enriched man or woman. Whatever people may agree or disagree about in ordinary likings and dislikings, mankind are at one in loving to wander, when the means and the time and the chance permit. Moreover, every one--even the adventurous wanderer who is on his way to unknown corners of the world where he will meet with danger, with hunger, and hardship of every kind--likes to journey in luxury when luxury is possible. And all men like the company of the people who matter --the folk who are ruling new-broken lands with an iron sceptre, travelling on diplomatic or scientific missions, making history, in fine, here and there in the strange new places, and the mysterious old ones, of the earth. So it comes that there is nothing in the life of the average man half so full of interest, or so much enjoyed, as the six weeks of the longest P. & O. voyage--the run to Australia. Such a journey is the cream of human experience. He would be an imaginative man, and an ingenious, who could suggest any possible enhancement of its interest. From Gibraltar, tremendous monument of British industry and British courage, with all the fascinations of the most romantic country in Europe lying behind the Kock, within gunshot of the liner's moorings, on to vivid Marseilles, where all the essence of the gay South of France is concentrated and represented in one sparkling bouquet of brilliant life--southward to Port Said, where the gateways of the East are opened, and the great liner steams into a new and marvellous world---down the Red Sea to sultry Aden, just a glimpse of...