Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/202

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appreciated, as do members of the Sports Committee. I am inclined to believe that the tall pastor is right. The communion service was advertised by posting notice of it on the bulletin board. The passengers know about hell, and about its rewards offered by the church; the pastor is quite right in letting them alone. As old-fashioned children used to say, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. . . . We feel tonight that we are almost within sight of Durban; we are still more than two thousand miles away, but we should be there in six more days, and we shall not mind the last two or three, in making preparations to land. The sun came out this afternoon, and the sea is smoother, so that we are all feeling better. . . . Back of the smoking-room there is a balcony where the passengers often sit. The young engineers also come up from the deck below, and sit in the balcony at times, when off duty. I have become acquainted with a number of them, and ask them questions about the sea. They explained to me where the Pacific ocean ends, and the Indian ocean begins. The line is somewhere in the vicinity of Melbourne, so that Australia is partly in the Indian ocean and partly in the Pacific. Flowing eastward from Africa, there is a great current. After reaching the vicinity of Melbourne and Tasmania the current turns, and flows westward five or six thousand miles. The two currents are a thousand miles apart. The "Anchises" came out in the current flowing eastward, and did not stop at Durban, but, on its homeward voyage, it is in the current flowing westward. The engineers say this current probably caused the Indian ocean to be distinguished from the Pacific. . . .