gaze out on the same streets or fields or trees;
but here our residence is driven along like a flying cloud, and we gain
a fresh view with every mile! I confess that I like sailing in populous
waters, for indeed the lonely tropical seas and the brassy skies are not
by any means to be regarded as delightful; but for the present we are
supposing ourselves to be in the track of vessels, and there is some new
and poignant interest for every hour. Watch this vast pallid cloud that
looms up far away; the sun strikes on the cloud, and straightway the
snowy mass gleams like silver; on it comes, and soon we see a superb
four-masted clipper broadside on to us. A royal fabric she is; every
snowy sail is drawing, and she moves with resistless force and matchless
grace through the water, while a boiling wreath of milky foam rushes
away from her bows, and swathes of white dapple the green river that
seems to pour past her majestic sides. The emigrants lean over the rail,
and gaze wistfully at us. Ah, how many thousands of miles they must
travel ere they reach their new home! Strange and pitiful it is to think
that so few of them will ever see the old home again; and yet there is
something bright and hopeful in the spectacle, if we think not of
individuals, but of the world's future. Under the Southern Cross a
mighty state is rising; the inevitable movement of populations is
irresistible as the tides of mid-ocean; and those wistful emigrants who
quietly wave their handkerchiefs to us are about to assist in working
out the destiny of a new world. Dull! The passing of that great vessel
gives matter for grave thought. She swings away, and we may perhaps try
to run alongside for a while, but the immense drag of her four towers of
canvas soon draws her clear, and she speedily looms once more like a
cloud on the horizon. Good-bye! The squat collier lumbers along, and her
leisurely grimy skipper salutes as we near him. It is marvellous to
reflect that the whole of our coal-trade was carried on in those queer
tubs only sixty years ago. They are passing away, and the gallant,
ignorant, comical race of sailors who manned them has all but
disappeared; the ugly sordid iron box that goes snorting past us,
belching out jets of water from her dirty side--that is the agency that
destroyed the colliers, and, alas, destroyed the finest breed of seamen
that ever the world saw! So rapidly do new sights and sounds greet us
that the night steals down almost