In the summer of 1879 R.L.S. was once more seized with the desire to
roam and to roam farther than ever before. California had been beckoning
to him for some time, and in August he suddenly made up his mind, and
with scarcely a word of farewell to his family and friends he embarked
on the steamship _Devonia_, bound for New York.

Partly for the sake of economy, for he determined to pay his own way on
this venture, and partly because he was anxious to experience emigrant
life, he engaged passage in the second cabin, which in those days
differed very little from the steerage. The main advantages were a
trifle better food and a cabin to himself with a table where he could
write.

In his usual way he soon made acquaintance with his fellow passengers
and did them many a friendly turn. They took him for one of themselves
and showed little curiosity as to where he came from, who he was, or
where he was going. He says: "The sailors called me 'mate,' the officers
addressed me as 'my man,' my comrades accepted me without hesitation for
a person of their own character and experience. One, a mason himself,
believed I was a mason, several, among these at least one of the seamen,
judged me to be a petty officer in the American navy; and I was so often
set down for a practical engineer that at last I had not the heart to
deny it."

The emigrants were from many countries, though the majority were Scotch
and Irish bound for the new world with the hope of meeting with better
fortune than they had had in the old, and they whiled away the days at
sea in their several ways, making the best of their discomforts and
cheering one another when they grew lonely or homesick for those they
had left behind.

When the weather was good their spirits rose and there were many rounds
of singing and story-telling as they sat clustered together like bees
under the lee of the deck-house, and in all of these Stevenson joined
heartily.

"We were indeed a musical ship's company," he says, "and cheered our way
into exile with the fiddle, the accordion, and the songs of all nations,
good, bad or indifferent--Scottish, English, Irish, Russian or
Norse--the songs were received with generous applause. Once or twice, a
recitation, very spiritedly rendered in a powerful Scotch accent, varied
the proceedings; and once we sought in vain to dance a quadrille, eight
men of us together, to the music of the violin. The performers were
humorous, frisky fellows, wh