After travelling by steerage in a China Coaster one wants a) bath. Anyone who ventures upon this enticingly cheap method of travel, more euphemistically called deck passage, is likely to be somewhat startled) by his accommodation if he is accustomed to the luxury of a cabin. Coming down from Tsingtao recently, the accommodation finally achieved after prolonged bustling among wharf coolies, odorous fellow passengers, and the general commotion of grinding winches and swinging cargo, consisted of a small slushy space of deck between great piles of cabbage baskets which in their entirety at first seemed suffocatingly fragrant.—The ship's departure from the wharf was delayed for several hours during which time there was nothing to do except lean against a wall of cabbage and wait. From that position, as noisy activity swirled about, could be seen the barbed-wire barrier which protected the "respectable" passengers and officers from the pirates who might be down in the after end of the ship to which steerage passengers were consigned, Eventually when the ship put out to sea, the deck-space between the cabbage mounds was cleaned up somewhat by the crew and a hose. Then as Tsingtao and the sun slipped off the western horizon the steerage passengers, all Russian or Chinese save one, began wheeling, bending and stretching about in preparation for the night. It seemed like camping at sea. The only wide open space on the after deck was the hatch upon which some fifty Russian women made ready to retire having been quick in the act of appropriation. The less fortunate looked elsewhere to place their cots or bedding rolls, some establishing bedrooms in crevices between cabbage baskets, others finding niches between portions of the winch machinery, and still others mounting the cabbage baskets to find a home.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.