wintry navigation, in a stormy latitude, duly to
appreciate. In the fine weather, smooth water, and light winds of
summer, these pilot-boats skim over the surface with the ease and
swiftness of a swallow, apparently just touching the water with their
prettily formed hulls, which seem too small to bear the immense load
of snow-white canvas swelling above them, and shooting them along as
if by magic, when every other vessel is lost in the calm, and when
even taunt-masted ships can barely catch a breath of air to fill their
sky-sails and royal studding-sails. They are truly "water-witches;"
for, while they look so delicate and fragile that one feels at first
as if the most moderate breeze must brush them from the face of the
ocean, and scatter to the winds all their gay drapery, they can and do
defy, as a matter of habit and choice, the most furious gales with
which the rugged "sea-board" of America is visited in February and
March.

I have seen a pilot-boat off New York, in the morning, in a calm, with
all her sails set, lying asleep on the water, which had subsided into
such perfect stillness that we could count the seam of each cloth in
the mirror beneath her, and it became difficult to tell which was the
reflected image, which the true vessel. And yet, within a few hours, I
have observed the same boat, with only her close-reefed foresail
set--no one visible on her decks--and the sea running mountains high,
threatening to swallow her up. Nevertheless, the beautiful craft rose
as buoyantly on the back of the waves as any duck, and, moreover,
glanced along their surface, and kept so good a wind, that, ere long,
she shot ahead, and weathered our ship. Before the day was done, she
could scarcely be distinguished from the mast-head to windward, though
we had been labouring in the interval under every sail we could safely
carry.

The balsas of Peru, the catamarans and masullah boats of the
Coromandel coast, and the flying proas of the South Sea Islands, have
all been described before, and their respective merits dwelt upon, by
Cook, Vancouver, Ulloa, and others. Each in its way, and on its
proper spot, seems to possess qualities which it is difficult to
communicate to vessels similarly constructed at a distance. The boats
of each country, indeed, may be said to possess a peculiar language,
understood only by the natives of the countries to which they belong;
and truly, the manner in which the vessels of some regions behave,