Your correspondent has just finished such a trip of misery, but he probably voices the sentiment of most travellers over this road in saying that if a real change is made in condition of launch travel these weeks of discomfort will be a small price for was ever a gatg of malefactors that merited punishment, it is the crowd that masquerade as attendants on these launches.
Every launch has a dozen, or so of these villains who have maintained their places by the evolutionary hypothesis of the survival of the toughest; physically they are a remarkable set, sinewy, hard, agile, with a spontaneous ability to mobilize instantly. Let one of them be disappointed in ithe size of his cumshaw and a single curse will bring half-a-dozen of his fellow thugs around him, all shouting threats of persona] violence. It is a stout-hearted man that dares resist them and their arrow gence knows no bounds.
Years ago the launch authorities recognized the intolerable situation and tried to mend it by charging 10 per cent: extra on each ticket and guaranteeing the passengers freedom from annoyance. So that we have to buy our regular ticket and a second ticket which is our receipt for the cumshaw. A man who knows his rights and is sufficiently ugly in maintaining the same may escape, but the great majority have to pay the gang anyhow.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.