April 7 Tuesday – At sea on the S.S. Wardha, Clara Clemens wrote to her cousin Samuel Moffett:

Thank you ever so much for sending me the photographs of your wife & children, they are charming & we are all so glad to have them. …. We are now on our way to Mauritius where we shall probably be quarantined for ten days simply because of a case of chicken pox on board — which I imagine maybe is really smallpox. They like better to call it chicken-pox. Our trip to India was shortened because my father wasn’t well & we had to wait two weeks in Jeypore, but I think we had about enough of hot dusty traveling anyway. If we could only see the country in a fairly comfortable state but we can’t after February really. My mother & I sleep on deck every night on account of the heat & cockroaches in the cabins. The cockroaches are as large as mice & more familiar. Thank goodness we change boats in Mauritius, & I hope the new one will be better [Ahluwalia 47].

Sam wrote,

We are far abroad upon the smooth waters of the Indian Ocean, now; it is shady and pleasant and peaceful under the vast spread of the awnings, and life is perfect again — ideal…I do not know how a day could be more reposeful: no motion; a level blue sea; nothing in sight from horizon to horizon; the speed of the ship furnishes a cooling breeze; there is no mail to read and answer; no newspapers to excite you; no telegrams to fret you or fright you — the world is far, far away; it has ceased to exist for you — seemed a fading dream, along in the first days; has dissolved to an unreality now…There is nothing like this serenity, this comfort, this peace, this deep contentment, to be found anywhere on land. If I had my way I would sail on forever and never go live on the solid ground again [FE: ch LXII 609-17].