o draw; but they were necessarily set so sharply at
angles with the ship as to do little good. Usually, one or two trysails
were all the canvass displayed, and they rather served to steady the
ship than to aid her progress; while for days together, stripped to her
naked spars, she was compelled to push her bowsprit into the wind's very
eye by the force of her engines alone. And that wind, though no
hurricane, had a will of its own; while the waves, rolled perpetually
against her bow by so long a succession of easterly winds, were a
decided impediment to our progress. I doubt whether there is another
steamship which could have made the passage safely and without extra
effort in less time than the Baltic did.

Our weather was not all bad, though we had no thoroughly fair day--no
day entirely free from rain--none in which the decks were dry
throughout. In fact, the spray often kept them thoroughly drenched,
especially aft, when there was no rain at all. During four or five of
the twelve days we had some hour or more of semi-sunshine either at
morning, midday or toward night. The only gales of much account were
those of our first night off Long Island and our last before seeing land
(Saturday), when on coming into soundings off the coast of Ireland, we
had a very decided blow and (the ship having become very light by the
consumption of most of her coal) the worst kind of a sea. It gave me my
sickest hour, though not my worst day.

Our dreariest days were Wednesday and Thursday, 23d and 24th, when we
were a little more than half way across. With the wind precisely ahead
and very strong, the skies black and lowering, a pretty constant rain,
and a driving, blinding spray which drenched every thing above the
decks, themselves ankle-deep in water, I cannot well imagine how two
hundred fellow-passengers, driven down and kept down in the cabins and
state-rooms of a steamship, could well be treated to a more dismal
prospect. I thought the philosophy even of the card-players (who were by
far the most industrious and least miserable class among us) was tried
by it.

Spacious as the Baltic is, two hundred passengers with fifty or sixty
attendants, confined for days together to her cabins, fill her quite
full enough. For those who are thoroughly well, there are society,
reading, eating, play and other pastimes; but for the sick and helpless,
who can neither read nor play, whom even conversation fatigues, and to
whom the under-deck s