still; but no one who knew the
capricious Mediterranean felt confident of continued fair weather.
However, at sea the mind takes little thought for the morrow, or even
for the afternoon; and as we sat in the warm shade of the awning,
looking out to the purple horizon in the east, or to the rocky and
varied coast to the west, I felt, and if the countenance be not
treacherous, all felt that it was good even for landsmen to be moving
over waters uncrisped except by the active paddles, beneath a sky all
radiant with light. My companions were chiefly Levant merchants, or
sallow East Indians; for I was on board the French packet _Le Caire_,
on its way from Alexandria, of Egypt, to Marseille.

I had several times passed the Straits, each time with renewed
pleasure and admiration. It would be difficult to imagine a
scene more wild and peculiar. After rounding the huge rock of
Tavolara--apparently a promontory running boldly out into the sea, but
in reality an island, we are at once at the mouth of the Straits. The
mountains of Corsica, generally enveloped in clouds, rise above the
horizon ahead, and near at hand a thousand rocks and islands of
various dimensions appear to choke up the passage. The narrow southern
channel, always selected by day, is intricate, and would be dangerous
to strangers; and indeed the whole of the Straits are considered so
difficult, that the fact of Nelson, without previous experience,
having taken his fleet through, is cited even by French sailors as a
prodigy.

On one of the rocky points of the Sardinian coast, I observed the
ruins of a building, but so deceptive is distance, I could not at
first determine whether it had been a fortress or a cottage. I asked
one of the officers for his telescope; and being still in doubt,
questioned him as I returned it. He smiled and said: 'For the last
five or six years, I have never passed through the Straits by day
without having had to relate the story connected with that ruin. It
has become a habit with me to do so; and if you had not spoken, I
should have been compelled, under penalty of passing a restless night,
to have let out my narrative at dinner. You will go down to your berth
presently; for see how the smoke is weighed down by the heavy
atmosphere upon the deck, and how it rolls like a snake along the
waters! What you fancy to be merely a local head-wind blowing through
the Straits, is a mistral tormenting the whole Gulf of Lions. We shall
be tossi