Excerpt from Travel Letters From New Zealand, Australia and Africa Saturday, january 4, 1913. - This is written in the Pacific ocean, on the ship Sonoma, two days out of Sydney, Australia, where we expect to land next Mon day. We have been on the ship seventeen days, and the passengers and servants seem as familiar as people with whom we have associated many years. In the main, we have had a pleasant voyage, although the weather was somewhat boisterous the first few days out of San Francisco. We stopped eight hours at Honolulu, and five hours at Pago Pago, in the Samoa Islands. There was an elaborate celebration on board on Christ mas day, which included a big dinner, speeches, and a dance, and we also had a similar New Year celebration, although we actually had no New Year's day. At a late hour on the 3lst of December we crossed the l80th meridian, and, when we awoke the following morning, the date was January 2, 1913. Ships sailing westward drop a day on crossing the 180th meridian, and ships going eastward add a day. In traveling toward the sun, the day increases in length, and, in a trip around the world, this increase amounts to exactly twenty four hours. Every day we set our watches back from twenty to thirty minutes, and when we reach Canton. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.