ny with Sir Neil Campbell, an Austrian and a Russian commissioner,
Captain Usher waited upon him, and was invited to dinner. He conversed
much on naval affairs, and explained the plan he had once conceived of
forming a vast fleet of 160 ships-of-the-line. He asked Captain Usher if
he did not think it would have been practicable; and Usher answered,
that with the immense means he then commanded, he saw no impossibility
in building and manning any number of ships, but his difficulty would
have consisted in forming thorough seamen as distinguished from what we
call smooth-water sailors. Napoleon replied that he had provided for
that also; he had organized exercises for them afloat, not only in
harbor, but in smaller vessels near the coast, by which they might have
been trained to go through, even in rough weather, the most arduous
manoeuvres of seamanship, which he enumerated; and he mentioned among
them the keeping a ship clear of her anchors in a heavy sea. The
Austrian, who suspected Napoleon of talking in general upon subjects he
imperfectly understood, acknowledging his own ignorance, asked him the
meaning of the term, the nature of the difficulty, and the method of
surmounting it. On this the emperor took up two forks, and explained the
problem in seamanship, which is not an easy one, in so short,
scientific, and practical a way, that Captain Usher assured me he knew
none but professional men, and very few of them, who could off-hand have
given so perspicuous, seamanlike, and satisfactory solution of the
question. Any board of officers would have inferred, from such an
exposition, that the person making it had received a naval education,
and was a practical seaman. Yet how different were the objects on which
the mind of Napoleon must have been long, as well as recently, employed!

On the same voyage, when the propriety of putting into a harbor of
Corsica was under discussion, and the want of a pilot urged as an
objection, Napoleon described the depth of water, shoals, currents,
bearings, and anchorage, with a minuteness which seemed as if he had
himself acted in that capacity; and which, on reference to the charts,
was found scrupulously accurate. When his cavalry and baggage arrived at
Porto Ferrajo, the commander of the transports said that he had been on
the point of putting into a creek near Genoa (which he named, but I have
forgotten); upon hearing which Napoleon exclaimed, "It is well you did
not; it is the wors