of the Arctic hills! Good-hearted, genuine, honest fellows all of them, and we liked them very much.
Among the Germans there was a Professor of Chemistry from Berlin who had travelled a good deal and had been to Calcutta and to Ceylon. He spoke in raptures about the lovely and enchanting scenery of Ceylon and described it as a paradise on earth. When I told him that his great fellow-countryman Haeckel had also described Ceylon in equally feeling terms, he surprised me by saying that Haeckel was one of his most intimate friends, and had mentioned his name in his work on Ceylon. He was a great admirer of Bismark and talked enthusiastically of the recent organization of the German empire and of the united German people. Bismark, he said, had more sense in his little finger than all the members of the German Parliament had in their heads put together!
The two or three Frenchmen on board were completely put to the shade by the strong German party. Our French friends.One of them belonged to a high family and gave me his Paris address, hoping to see me there, and all of them were extremely polite and elegant in their manners as Frenchmen always are. They were generally taciturn, however, in the presence of the Germans, and on the whole I do not think they much enjoyed the trip in such company! Once or twice a remark escaped them that these Germans were rough and unsympathetic. I could quite understand their subdued feeling,—a feeling which all Frenchmen share and will continue to share till they
