variable winds and fine weather. They feel a professional interest in battling successfully with a storm. They view the ordinary incidents of their employment in fine weather as a drudgery, while in bad weather they go to work with the keenness and alacrity of sportsmen in the chase.

In harbour they employ themselves during their allotted number of hours per day with a carefully regulated diligence; but they take little pride in their personal appearance, and are with difficulty induced to attend to the complimentary duties of a yacht. These things, which are done so well, from long habit, in a vessel of war, are poorly executed by men unaccustomed to discipline. British merchant seamen are, as a rule, masters in the art of seamanship. As sentries at the gangway they are less excellent; and if they are sturdy and stalwart, they are not stylish oarsmen. The same thoroughness in the work of his own special trade, which we admire in all classes of British workmen, was manifested by my little company of two engineers and two firemen. Supplemented by a reinforcement from the deck between Penang and Colombo, and thence to Port Said by native firemen, borrowed from the P. and O. service, they stood to their work through the long passages across the Bay of Bengal, the Arabian and the Red Seas, with as much zeal and spirit as the engine-room staff of a mail steamer racing a rival across the Atlantic.

It cannot be my lot to go to sea again for a lengthened period, and I am glad that my experience closes with the stable conviction that the British seaman, lazy as he is in easy times, and stubborn in his prejudices against new inventions, in a real emergency is seldom found unworthy of the great traditions of our naval history.

From our seamen I turn to the experiences of the voyage. The first incident to which I shall refer occurred on the 13th of July last, in the latitude of Cape St. Vincent, and about 50 miles from the land. It shall be described in a quotation from a diary kept by Mrs. Brassey

About 10.30 A.M. a black object was seen, about three miles distant, which proved, on examination with the telescope, to be a dismasted vessel. We altered our course, steered to the wreck, and sent a boat on board. As we approached, we could read her name-the 'Carolina '—surmounted by a gorgeous yellow decoration on her square stern. She was a deserted vessel of between two and three hundred tons burden, and was painted a light blue, with a red streak. Her bowsprit was painted white, and the gaudy image of a woman served as a figure-head. The two masts were snapped off, about three feet from the deck, and the bulwarks were gone, only the covering board and stanchions remaining, so that each wave washed over and through her. The roof and supports of the deck-house and the companions were still left standing, but the sides had disappeared, and the ship's deck was burst up in such a manner as to remind one of a quail's back.

We saw the men on board searching the vessel in all directions, apparently very pleased with what they had found; and soon our boat returned to the yacht for some breakers, as the 'Carolina' was laden with port wine and cork, and the men

wished to bring some of the former on board. I put on sea-boots, and, with the children, started for the wreck.

We found the men rather excited over their discovery. The wine must have been very new and very strong, and the smell from it, as it slopped about all over the deck, was almost enough to intoxicate anybody. One pipe was emptied into the breakers and barrels, and great efforts were then made to remove the casks; but this was found to be impossible without devoting more time to the operation than we chose to spare. The men managed to get out three half-empty casks with their heads stove in, which they threw overboard, but the full ones would have required special appliances to raise them through the hatches. The wine was stowed underneath the cork, and it was exceedingly difficult to reach it owing to the quantity of cabin bulkheads and fittings which were floating about, under the influence of the long swell of the Atlantic.

It was a curious sight, standing on the roof of the deck-house, to look into the hold, full of floating bales of cork, barrels, and pieces of wood, and to watch the sea surging up in every direction, through and over the deck, which was level with the water's edge. An excellent modern iron cooking-stove was washing about from side to side; but almost every other movable article, including spars and ropes, had apparently been removed by previous boarders.

It would have delayed us too long to tow the vessel into the nearest port, 375 miles distant, or we might have claimed the salvage-money, estimated by the experts at 1,5007. She was too low in the water for it to be possible for us, with our limited appliances, to blow her up; so we were obliged to leave her floating about as a derelict, a fertile source of danger to all ships crossing her track. With her buoyant cargo, and with the trade winds slowly wafting her to smoother seas, it may probably be some years before she breaks up. I only hope that no good ship may run full speed on to her some dark night, or the 'Carolina' will be at least as formidable an obstacle as a sunken rock. How many losses at sea, 'cause unknown,' may be attributed, I wonder, to floating wrecks?

Here we have an illustration of a danger of the sea which no vigilance can entirely remove. We had come upon a bulky vessel, adrift in a frequented part of the ocean, with no means of showing a light at night. Such an obstacle might cause the destruction of any passing ship, which, in the darkness, would have no warning of her danger until her bows were stove in.

On the following day we had our first experience in the present cruise of the dangers arising from fog. The wind had been light. With every sail set, we had made good but twenty-nine miles since noon, and at 7 P.M. the breeze died away to a dead calm. We proceeded accordingly under steam, and shortly afterwards were enveloped in a dense fog. At 11 P.M. the mist partially cleared away, and during the middle watch the atmosphere resumed its usual serenity.

At 6 A.M. on the 15th, we passed within hail of the steamer "Roman,' bound from the Cape to Southampton, and made our number. Steering on exactly reversed courses, and meeting, as we did, almost end on, some reflections on the risk of running at full speed in a fog, even in parts of the sea where few vessels are encountered, naturally suggested themselves to us. propriety of perpetually sounding the steam-whistle was debated, in

Last night the

consultation with a most experienced master in the merchant service and a commander in the navy. It was decided that, when proceeding at eight or nine knots an hour, a periodical sounding of the whistle, at intervals of five minutes, as required by law, was of little practical value, and that the chances of meeting a ship were too remote to render it necessary to reduce speed. But we might have met the 'Roman' a few hours earlier, and in that case we should have run a very grave risk of a fatal collision. The result of our deliberations was rash. We should have slowed the engines and sounded the whistle.

I must not be tempted to dwell on a delightful visit to Madeira, that gem in the ocean, such as Shelley has described:

Many a green isle needs must be
In the deep wide sea of misery,
Or the mariner, worn and wan,
Never thus could voyage on,
Day and night, and night and day,
Drifting on his dreary way.

To such a one this morn was led
My bark, by soft winds piloted.

How many of our suffering fellow-countrymen and sisters have sought, in this far-distant island, recovery from the insidious attacks of wasting disease! Many have come here, only to die. Many, happily, return home, restored to health by a temporary sojourn in this balmy climate.

In summer there are no invalids in Madeira. The heat, indeed, is such the thermometer ranging from 79° to 86° in the shade at the time of our visit-that it would be exhausting to persons in weak health.

The English residents at Funchal were lavish of kindness and hospitality to us. Their residences are charming. Every house possesses a lovely garden, gay with glorious masses of flowersgeraniums, fuchsias, dahlias, and almost every bud and blossom known to botany-and shaded by the ample foliage of tropical plants. The tulip tree, palm, banana, and magnolia attain to the dimensions of forest trees. The walls of the houses are adorned with the most splendid creepers, among which the gorgeous purple masses of bougainvillea form a conspicuous ornament of every garden in Funchal.

In kindness to the invalids in the winter season the English residents here are unwearying; and though many years may have elapsed since their last visit to their native land-though some, indeed, have been born on this island, and have never quitted its shores-they all speak of England as home.'

The population of Madeira is about 110,000.. The chief source

of wealth was, until lately, the vine; but successive attacks of disease have made the cultivation of the grape so precarious that the sugarcane is being extensively substituted with advantageous results. The value of a crop of sugar-cane is about 137. an acre, and, according to the custom of Madeira, one-half of the total amount realised goes to the landlord.

There were formerly large estates in the island. By a recent enactment, the equal subdivision of landed property among the direct descendants of the deceased proprietor is now the law of Madeira as it is of Portugal.

From Madeira we sailed to Teneriffe. This interesting island lies on the track of every circumnavigator, and the account of our interesting visit must not detain us long. Our great object was to climb the peak. We started at 1 A.M. on the morning after our arrival. The ascent occupied exactly eleven hours and a half. The height attained was 12,100 feet. The rude paths are practicable for mountain ponies as far as the Estancia de los Ingleses, an elevation of 10,000 feet above the sea level. The last 2,000 feet must be climbed on foot over masses of broken lava very difficult to traverse. Having surmounted the lava, the traveller reaches a small plain, called the Rambleta, from the centre of which the Piton, or Sugarloaf Peak, takes. its rise. Its slopes are almost perpendicular, and are covered with loose ashes. Hence the labour of the ascent, under the noonday heat of a tropical sun, was almost insupportable. On reaching the summit, however, the view before us was an ample reward for all we had undergone. We found ourselves on the narrow edge of an extinct crater, the white and sulphurous walls of which formed an extraordinary contrast to the dark masses of lava which had been poured forth in former eruptions, and had filled the sandy plain below with masses of brown and vermilion colour.

It is impossible to conceive a scene more desolate. Everywhere it bears the marks of the volcanic fires. It was in such a waste as this that the rebellious spirit of Capaneus was so fiercely rebuked by Æneas in the presence of Dante :—

I' dico, che arrivammo ad una landa,
Che dal suo letto ogni pianta rimuove.
La dolorosa selva le è ghirlanda
Intorno, come 'l fosso tristo ad essa:
Quivi fermammo i piedi a randa a randa,
Lo spazzo era una rena arida e spessa.

Longfellow thus translates the passage :—

I say that we arrived upon a plain,
Which from its bed rejecteth every plant;
The dolorous forest is a garland to it
All round about, as the sad moat to that;
There close upon the edge we stayed our feet.
The soil was of an arid and thick sand.

When day

The view was not so extensive as we had hoped. dawned, and we were able to take a survey of the landscape, we had found ourselves already above a white and fleecy and perfectly level mass of cloud, resembling a vast plain covered with rifted snow. These clouds remained motionless throughout the day, and quite concealed the blue waters of the Atlantic.

The ascent of the Peak of Teneriffe is interesting as a means of determining the vertical height to which that great atmospheric movement known as the trade-wind extends. According to the theory first proposed by Edmond Halley in 1686, and now very generally accepted, the high temperature causes the air in the tropics to rise up. It is replaced by the colder and heavier air from the poles. The reason why the trade-winds are felt, not as simple polar winds, but as north-easterly and south-easterly winds, is that currents of air, blowing from the poles to the equator, have less rotary velocity than the surface of the earth. Hence these winds have been compared by Dr. Arnott to a fluid coming from the axis of a turning wheel to its circumference. The theory that in the lower strata the air is constantly flowing towards the equator, and that in the upper regions a counter-current is constantly directed to the poles, is confirmed by the changes of wind experienced in the ascent of the Peak of Teneriffe. Immediately after passing through the stratum of clouds, which, at a height of 2,000 feet above the sea, formed such a remarkable feature in the scene, we experienced eddy winds, and on reaching the summit of the peak we found a steady breeze blowing from the south-west, or in a direction opposed to the trade-wind below.

THOMAS BRASSEY.