stitution of charts for every month for the present charts for every quarter of the year.

A service would be rendered to Pacific navigation by sending an officer to San Francisco, Honolulu, Tahiti, and Australia, for the purpose of consulting with the masters of ships constantly trading in the adjacent seas. By examining their logs, much information might be obtained as to the prevailing winds and the best routes across that vast ocean. The inquiry might be extended, so as to test in some degree the accuracy of our charts for those seas. A wide field has been covered by the labours of Admiral Sir Henry Denham, Sir Edward Belcher, and Beechey, but the work is not completed. A further exploration of the Pacific would be quite as good a training in seamanship, and a more fruitful labour than a renewed attempt to reach the North Pole. The charts are still full of uninvestigated dangers.

Not less valuable are the rules for the handling of vessels when overtaken by revolving storms. The names of Reid, Piddington, Meldrum, Professor Dove, and Mr. Scott and Captain Toynbee, of the Meteorological Office, are honourably known in connection with this intricate and by no means exhausted subject.

Apart from the discovery of certain general laws which are universally observed in cases of extreme weather disturbance, the progress of the science of meteorology has hitherto been slow and disappointing. No more conclusive proof of the uncertainty in which the subject is still enveloped could be cited than the statement, made last year by Mr. Warren de la Rue, in his evidence as a witness before the Treasury Committee on Meteorology. He said that for three years each member of the Committee of the Royal Society, under whose superintendence the Meteorological Office has been managed, had received every day, by the evening post, a forecast of the probable weather in London on the following day. The result had been a mottled -success; or, in other words, the prediction was as often wrong as right. The Treasury Committee very properly reported that 'there was important evidence that the science of meteorology at the present time stands in need of hypothesis and discussion at least as much as, if not more than, of observation.'

6

While we have attained a considerable knowledge of the average weather, for extended periods, in all those regions of the globe where we have an important maritime trade, we are still without a clue to guide us in determining the probable changes of the weather from day to day. The discovery of the laws which govern the movements of the atmosphere must not, however, be regarded as hopeless; and the methodical system of observation, now established by international agreement among all civilised nations, must lead in the end to some useful results.

While life at sea is fresh in my recollection, I shall venture to

particularise some of the hardships of the sailor, with which I have learned to sympathise more keenly after spending eleven months afloat. The life of the sailor is too monotonous. To spend 160 days at sea with the mongrel associates that the forecastle ordinarily affords is enough to distress the gayest spirits. It is a life of privation to live. on salt beef, salt pork, salt butter, and hard biscuit, even when these provisions are of undeniable quality; but when this condition of things has to be endured for weeks together, beneath a vertical sun, with the thermometer at 90°--when there are no steady breezes, and the anxious skipper is for ever calling upon his crew to trim the sails to every catspaw-the severity of the ordeal is increased tenfold. It is a life of hardship to do battle for long weeks, under close reefs, in the stormy seas south of the Cape of Good Hope, or to scud round the Horn, surrounded by icebergs, with sails and rigging frozen, and with no suitable clothing.

Under an almost vertical sun, only six degrees north of the equator, and in the torrid heat of the tropics, I was forcibly reminded of the discomfort-nay, the suffering-caused by constant and extreme vicissitudes of climate. Not a month had elapsed since the 'Sunbeam' was covered every morning by a sheet of ice, formed over the deck in a few minutes as soon as sea-water was pumped up for the usual daily scrubbing.

Fifteen days' sail from ice-bound Simonoseki brought us to Singapore, in latitude only one degree north from the equator, where the thermometer registered 90° in a roomy and well-ventilated cabin, and where for several hours in the day no European, who can avoid it, ventures out of doors. A thoughtful commander will endeavour to modify the routine of work afloat in accordance with the variations. of climate, yet in the exigencies of a sea life the necessity may arise for extra exertions at any moment. The present writer well remembers how it happened, in his own case, that it was during the hottest hours of the day, in the burning month of March, that the 'Sunbeam' was coaled and removed from the wharf in the new harbour to the outer roadstead at Singapore; that at noon on the two succeeding days the services of the men were required in the boats at Singapore and Johore; and that between noon and 1 P.M. on the fourth day, the anchor, with fifty fathoms of chain outside the hawse, was weighed by manual labour off Malacca. No limit was placed on the supply of limes, lime juice, and fresh fruit to the crew of the 'Sunbeam.' How inferior inevitably must be the rations supplied on board a merchant ship on a long voyage, touching at no port for the space of a hundred and forty days! The crews must subsist chiefly on a diet which is not inviting in the appetising atmosphere of the Arctic or Antarctic zones, and which must be positively repugnant to unfortunate Europeans, panting and sore athirst, in a protracted calm on the line. None but those who have been long at sea in the tropics

can fully appreciate that it is not storm and tempest, nor yet rain and cold, but heat, intolerable and long-enduring heat, which causes the most intense discomfort to the seamen in the foreign trade.

Life before the mast was described with his usual vigour by Dr. Johnson, in one of those conversations so tenaciously remembered by the admiring Boswell.

As to the sailor (said the great moralist), when you look down from the quarterdeck to the space below, you see the utmost extremity of human misery, such crowding, such filth, such stench!

Boswell. Yet sailors are happy.

Johnson. They are happy as brutes are happy with a piece of fresh meat—with the grossest sensuality. But, sir, the profession of soldiers and sailors has the dignity of danger. Mankind reverence those who have got over fear, which is so general a weakness.

Scott. We find people fond of being sailors.

Johnson. I cannot account for that, any more than I can account for other strange perversions of the imagination.

The sailor who goes long voyages in sailing ships, even if married, is practically a homeless and friendless man. Rare indeed are his opportunities of advising with a counsellor in a sphere superior to his own, or gaining the favour of a powerful patron. The shipowner knows nothing of the seamen in his employ, and no ties like those that bind together the landlord and tenant, the cottager and the squire, can be established between them. Again, there is a difficulty in giving to the sailor a direct inducement to diligence. That is done in other employment by piece-work. The nature of the occupation forbids the extension of such a system to the sea; and thus the sailor is not animated by the incentives to vigorous exertion which exercise such a wholesome influence over other classes of workmen, in correcting the indolence which is part of human nature.

A lesson may be learned by contrasting the privileges of the quarter-deck with the disadvantages of the forecastle. From time to time the newspapers have been filled with complaints of the misconduct of British seamen in foreign ports. Their bad behaviour is an almost inevitable consequence of the peculiar circumstances in which they are placed. After a weary voyage, who does not sigh for the blessings of the land? The sailor, confined for months in the narrow and unattractive limits of the forecastle, shares the universal longing of human nature. He lands, an utter stranger, without a friend, unnoticed by the crowd, and ignorant of the language. He is soon accosted by a fellow-countryman, one of that low class who make an ill-gotten livelihood by pandering to the vices of young seamen. The tempter invites his victim to lodgings close at hand, and engages to cheer his life ashore with all the pleasures that are supposed to delight the sailor. The sequel is only too plainly foreshadowed. After an interval of a few days, the unhappy mariner

returns to consciousness, only to find his pockets empty and his brain stupefied with drugged liquors. No longer in funds or credit, he is hurried on board a ship which he has never seen, for a voyage the nature of which he scarcely cares to inquire. Thus a new term of privation is commenced, with another equally miserable orgy in prospect at its close.

What a different picture did their life ashore present to the passengers in the Sunbeam'! They were warmly welcomed at every port by ministers, governors, consuls, naval officers, and merchants. All that there was of interest in the surrounding district was pointed out. Every facility for the excursions that had been suggested was provided; and a friendly hospitality was extended to us by the leading English residents. We can never repay, nor be sufficiently grateful for, all the kindness we have received.

Our crew were not neglected. They too were greeted with pressing invitations; but they came from a less disinterested quarter. Though the remedy for these evils is not obvious or easy, it is well to become acquainted with their existence, by sharing, however slightly, in the hardships of the sea.

My recent voyage has confirmed my earlier convictions that the average British sailor is a man of more merit than his modern detractors are prepared to acknowledge. The crew of the 'Sunbeam' were by no means a corps d'élite. They should have been so, but the local prejudices of my sailing-master, by whom the greater number of the deck hands were selected, would always make him prefer a raw under-sized lad, if brought up in a Colchester smack, to the choicest seaman procurable in the port of London. He has no confidence in any man's conduct or seamanship unless he has been reared on the banks of the Colne.

Although thus, to a considerable extent, the victim of the local prejudices of my chief subordinate, I had the good fortune to find several eligible men in the ship's company. The boatswain, who was brought up in a collier brig, and has made voyages to the East Indies, America, and the White Sea, was an old follower, an excellent seaman, and never absent from the post of duty. Among the fourteen hands before the mast were to be found the ex-boatswain of the 'Monk's Haven,' whom we rescued from his burning ship off the coast of Patagonia; two ex-quartermasters who had served in large mail steamers of the Pacific and Peninsular and Oriental Companies; and two deep-water sailors, highly recommended by one of the oldest shipping masters of the port of London. One of the latter was an incessant reader, and very active aloft. He had a rich tenor voice, and the ready wit on all occasions, so characteristic of a Londoner; yet he was by no means fit for the rating of an able seaHe could neither heave the lead nor use the palm and needle. The other-a Bristol man, a thorough seaman, and most orderly on

man.

board and regular in his attendance at the Sunday services-was by no means unexceptionable in his conduct while in port. So long as he had money in his pockets he was utterly unable to resist the temptations of harbour life.

Among the other seamen belonging to the Sunbeam' were three experienced fishermen, four inexperienced fishermen, and a veteran dredgerman of the coasts of Essex. Judging by his deportment and a certain want of freedom in his movements, I am convinced that the latter was a sexagenarian. Though his previous explorations had not extended north of Orfordness or west of the Isle of Wight, he shipped as lamp-trimmer for a voyage round the world of 36,000 miles as if it were an every-day occurrence. This adventurous old soul did not spend more than six hours on shore from the day when the Sunbeam' sailed from his native river until her return to England.

It will be obvious from this catalogue raisonné of our blue-jackets that a more choice selection might have been made; and the inference will probably be drawn that a chief officer who would ship such a crew for such a voyage was not likely to have been endued with exceptional qualifications for any novel or arduous undertaking. Such a conclusion is, in point of fact, fully supported by the subsequent history of our cruise. It should here be explained that, while I was responsible for the navigation and manoeuvring of my little vessel-giving general orders as to the sails to be set or taken in, and directing when steam should or should not be used-many details of seamanship at sea, and all matters of discipline in harbour, were carried out by my sailing-master. Much, therefore, depended on him, and he was a man who, possessing many merits, was wanting in many essential qualifications for command. Without the slightest claim to superior educational advantages, and related by ties of blood or marriage to more than half the crew-living in the village from which they came, and afraid to the last degree of giving offence, especially to female relatives at home, by strictness towards their husbands or brothers serving afloat--he exercised the authority delegated to him with a far too sensitive regard for the feelings of his subordinates. These weaknesses and defects were partially redeemed by his personal example of sobriety, vigilance, and contented submission to all the inevitable discomforts of a long voyage in the tropics.

Briefly stated, the results of my latest and widest experiences are in harmony with the impressions derived from earlier and shorter expeditions. The harder it blows, the better the conduct of the British seaman. Is a spar carried away? Are the boats adrift? Is it necessary to batten down? Your men will remain on deck through the night, and work hard without a murmur; while they grumble, without a shadow of justification, at the frequent hauling of ropes in