and another white flag on the mizen-mast had the
yawl's name inscribed. Six other gay colours were used as occasion
required. These all being hoisted on a fine bright day, and my voyage
really begun, the 'Chichester' lads 'boyed' the rigging, and gave three
ringing cheers as they shouted, "Take these to France, sir!" and the
frigate dipped her ensign in salute, my flag lieutenant smartly
responding to the compliment as we bade "good-bye."

The Thames to seaward looks different to me every time I float on its
noble flood. I have seen it from on board steamers large and small, from
an Indiaman's deck, the gunwale of a cutter, and the poop of an ironclad,
as well as from rowboat and canoe, and have penetrated almost every nook
and cranny on the water, some of them a dozen times, yet always it is new
to see.

Thames river life is a separate world from the land life in houses. The
day begins on the water full an hour before sunrise. Cheery voices and
hearty faces greet you, and there seems to be no maimed, or sick, or
poor. From the simple fact that you are on the river, there is a
brotherhood with every sailor. The _mode_ is supple as the water, not
like the stiff fashion of the land. Ships and shipmen soon become the
"people." The other folks on shore are, to be sure, pretty numerous, but
then they are ashore. Undoubtedly they are useful to provide for us who
are afloat the butter, eggs, and bread they do certainly produce; and we
gaze pleasantly on their grassy lawns and bushy trees, and can hear the
lark singing on high, and peacocks screaming, and all are very pretty,
and we are bound to try to sympathize with people thus pinned to the
soil, while we are free in the fine fresh breeze, and glide on the
bounding wave. _N.B._--These very people are all the while regarding
_us_ with humane pity, as the "poor fellows in that little ship there,
cabined, cribbed, confined." Perhaps it is well for all of us that the
stand-point of each, be it ever so bleak, becomes to him the centre of
creation.

As the country lane has charms for the botanist which will sadly delay
one in a summer stroll with such a companion, so to the nautical mind
every reach on a full river has a constant flow of incidents quite
unnoticed by the landsmen. In the crowd of ships around us, no two are
quite the same even to look at, nor are they doing the same thing, and
there are hundreds passing. What a feast for the eye that hath an
appet