es, and with a fierce south-east wind, how the waves
would pour in here! Woe then to the distressed and rudderless vessel
that drifts towards those fatal rocks! This gives the outmost and
boldest view of the point.

[Illustration: View East of Kinsale.]

The Albion struck just round the left of the point, where the rock rises
perpendicularly out of the sea. I well remember, when a child, of the
newspapers being filled with the dreadful story of the wreck of the ship
Albion--how for hours, rudderless and helpless, they saw themselves
driving with inevitable certainty against these pitiless rocks; and how,
in the last struggle, one human being after another was dashed against
them in helpless agony.

What an infinite deal of misery results from man's helplessness and
ignorance and nature's inflexibility in this one matter of crossing the
ocean! What agonies of prayer there were during all the long hours that
this ship was driving straight on to these fatal rocks, all to no
purpose! It struck and crushed just the same. Surely, without the
revelation of God in Jesus, who could believe in the divine goodness? I
do not wonder the old Greeks so often spoke of their gods as cruel, and
believed the universe was governed by a remorseless and inexorable fate.
Who would come to any other conclusion, except from the pages of the
Bible?

But we have sailed far past Kinsale point. Now blue and shadowy loom up
the distant form of the Youghal Mountains, (pronounced _Yoole_.) The
surface of the water is alive with fishing boats, spreading their white
wings and skimming about like so many moth millers.

About nine o'clock we were crossing the sand bar, which lies at the
mouth of the Mersey River, running up towards Liverpool. Our signal
pennants are fluttering at the mast head, pilot full of energy on one
wheel house, and a man casting the lead on the other.

"By the mark, five," says the man. The pilot, with all his energy, is
telegraphing to the steersman. This is a very close and complicated
piece of navigation, I should think, this running up the Mersey, for
every moment we are passing some kind of a signal token, which warns off
from some shoal. Here is a bell buoy, where the waves keep the bell
always tolling; here, a buoyant lighthouse; and "See there, those
shoals, how pokerish they look!" says one of the passengers, pointing to
the foam on our starboard bow. All is bustle, animation, exultation. Now
float out the American