pillar, and looks very much like one, being of about
the same thickness, only round instead of square, and about twice as
long as the average elevated-road pillar is high.

The sails of the racers are probably the most wonderful part of their
whole make up. _Defender_, when she has her mainsail, her jib, her jib
topsail, her staysail, and her working topsail up, carries 12,000 square
feet of canvas. And when she substitutes for these working-sails her
balloon jib, her club topsail, and puts out her spinnaker she almost
doubles that area. These sails cost thousands of dollars, because there
must be several of each in case of accident to one or another, and for
use in the different kinds of wind that may prevail in a race. There is
a heavy mainsail for strong winds, of sea-island cotton or Egyptian
cotton or ramie cloth, while the jibs are made of lighter grades of the
same material, until they come down to the constituency of a coarse
pocket-handkerchief. One of _Defender_'s spinnakers is of Scotch linen.
In 1893 it was reported that one of _Valkyrie II._'s big spinnakers was
of silk, but it was not; it was of exceedingly fine Irish linen.

Taking all these matters into account, and considering that each boat
must have from forty to fifty sailors to man her, it becomes evident
that the building and maintaining of such a yacht is a matter of no
small expense. Mr. George Gould spent no less than $40,000 to put
_Vigilant_ in condition to race with _Defender_ in the preliminary
trials this year. The crew has to be engaged and trained for weeks
before the racer is put into commission, and kept at work for a couple
of months before the great contests for the Cup are held. These sailors,
of course, cannot live on the yacht, since there is no room for bunks or
lockers or a galley on the modern racing-machine. Therefore both
_Defender_ and _Valkyrie_ have steam-tenders.

There is really something humorous about a crew of sailors leaving their
hollow unbunked boat every evening to go to bed in a tender near by. At
meal-time, too, the gallant tars have to seek their floating hotel. When
_Defender_ was with the New York Yacht Squadron on this summer's cruise
she reached port one evening ahead of most of the fleet, and of her slow
consort. She was too deep of draught to get far into the harbor, and
being a "racer" she had nothing aboard but men and sails, a small
anchor, and a small dinghy. Consequently the crew sat on the deck for