of the mode in which he tried to amuse himself in that town until the wind got into a better humour for the prosecution of the voyage. At length, after many days' detention, they set sail; again the wind beat them, and forced them to anchor; again the captain tacked about and tried to coax the vessel onward; until at length, on the 26th of the month, they anchored in Torbay. Here they remained many days, utterly unable to stir farther westward; so they employed themselves in sending for cider and other provisions from the shore, and making short land excursions. Fielding's journal is deficient in dates. from that period; so that it is somewhat difficult to tell how many days afterwards they finally set sail from the coast towards Lisbon; but we know, at all events, that from the day when the sick man went aboard the ship till the ship anchored at Torbay, a period of thirty days elapsed,-sufficient now-a-days to bring the Overland mail from Bombay to London! Can contrast be stronger?

Ramsgate, the easternmost of the south ports of England, has been, like its neighbour Margate, a favourite resort of pleasure-seekers since the establishment of steam navigation; but in a commercial point of view it is much more important than Margate, principally on account of its fine harbour. The steam trip from London to Ramsgate is a daily one; but it has never approached in magnitude the steaming from places less distant from the metropolis. Railways here furnish an instance of fellowship with steamers. Before the establishment of any railways in Kent, Ramsgate kept up a communication with Ostend and other ports, for the conveyance of passengers; but when the South-Eastern Railway reached Dover, steampackets were placed upon an efficient footing to run from Dover to Ostend, to the detriment of Ramsgate. When, however, the same railway company extended their Canterbury branch to Ramsgate, a new phase in the traffic presented itself; the steam-boat company, in connexion with the railway company, removed their Ostend steamers from Dover, and placed them on the Ramsgate station; and now a well conducted competition is maintained from Dover, and from Ramsgate, to Ostend, in which every effort is made to bring steaming up to its highest pitch of efficiency.

Dover and Folkstone both exhibit the remarkable influence of railways upon steamers, which Ramsgate exemplifies in a smaller degree. Dover enjoys the advantage of being the great port for continental embarkation, on account of its vicinity to the coast of France; and circumstances seemed to place the town above all reach of competition. But the inhabitants have had to open their eyes to a fact which railways have disclosed to them-the rise of Folkstone from a humble fishing village to an important steam-boat station. When the South-Eastern Company found, some years back, that there was likely to be some difficulty in placing an efficient steam-transit in connexion with a railway at Dover; they bought up Folkstone harbour, cleared it out, built a pier, made

a first-class station and refreshment room, procured steamers, and astonished the Dover people by establishing a daily steam-conveyance from Folkstone to Boulogne and back. It would be difficult to estimate the importance of this step. It made the Railway Company to a certain degree independent of Dover; while it gave the inhabitants of that town a strong inducement to do their best to retain their own trade, by accelerating the boats, lowering the fees of embarkation, and removing a few of those annoyances which no one experiences so largely as a traveller.

We may run rapidly along the coast from Folkstone to Portsmouth, without stopping long at its several ports; for they are not connected much with passengervoyaging. Rye, poor old Rye, has become so much choked up with sea-sand, that the harbour hardly knows itself. Hastings, though a fine watering-place, has not much sea-traffic, except for goods and fish: its steaming days have yet to begin. Brighton has such shallow water, that she has had to ask her sister Shoreham to aid in establishing a steam-transit to Dieppe.

The vicinage of the Isle of Wight to Portsmouth, and the beauty of the island as a place of residence, have always maintained considerable intercourse between the two; which intercourse used formerly to be kept up by row-boats and small sailing-boats. When steam-boats became established, there could scarcely be any other result than that the transit should be wholly maintained by such means. At all hours of the day are the little steamers passing and repassing; and the Isle has become almost as a suburb of London.

But Southampton is, perhaps, one of the most interesting of our steam-ship stations, on account of its connexion with the Overland and the West India routes. Until a period comparatively recent, Southampton was merely a pleasure town, which, in relation to commerce, could not venture to hold up its head in the presence of its big neighbour Portsmouth. It has now become a busy sea-port.

The history of the East India Mail is an interesting one. The old sailing route round the Cape of Good Hope will probably long remain the only one for heavy merchandise traffic; because the expense of transporting such commodities over the Isthmus of Suez would wholly outweigh any advantages to be derived from economy of time. It is only in respect to passengers, mails, and light luggage, that the overland route has risen into importance. When steam transit became established on a sufficiently firm basis, it was soon ascertained experimentally that a steamer could make the passage safely round the Cape of Good Hope, by the same route as the sailing ships. But the Cape route still remains, in effect, a sailing route; and it is to the Mediterranean route that we must look for the development of steam agency. About fifteen years ago, it was a disputed point whether a route might efficiently be opened by way of the Euphrates to the Persian Gulf, or by way of Egypt to the Red Sea :

and Captain Chesney was despatched to examine the former. The result has been that the Euphrates route is for the present, at all events, abandoned, and the Red Sea route established. Steamers were despatched to and fro several times between Suez and Bombay, to try how far the monsoons were likely to effect the certainty and rapidity of the passage; and while these points were under trial, the Peninsular and Oriental Company were consolidating a plan for regular steam communication between England and the Mediterranean, and the French government improved their steam-boat conveyance from Marseilles to Malta. By degrees, too, the extraordinary ruler of Egypt, Mehemet Ali, had sagacity enough to enter into the plan, and offer all the aid in his power to the establishment of a safe mode of transit over the sandy tract of land which intervenes between the Nile and the Red Sea at Suez. There were thus combined the English government, the French government, the Egyptian government, the East India Company, the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, and-perhaps the most energetic of all-Lieutenant Waghorn, who first started this great plan, and who has pursued it with untiring energy in the face of innumerable obstacles. All were working towards the attainment of the same object.

This Mediterranean route is of two kinds-the rapid route for the mail, and slower but still swift route for passengers by the steam-boat. The first portion of the route is from India-say by Bombay-across the Indian ocean, and up the Red Sea to Suez: this occupies somewhere about fifteen days, a little more or less. Then there is the transit over the Isthmus of Suez from that town to Cairo, and from Cairo to Alexandria; together about three days. Then comes the steam conveyance to Malta: about six days' passage. At Malta the transit divides itself into two parts-the more swift, and the less swift. The former steams it from Malta to Marseilles in four days; the diligence, or post, or railway, or all combined, from Marseilles to Calais or Dover; and then steam or rail to London. This is the "overland" passage for expresses, letters, and newspapers, which, according to present arrangements, occupies about thirty days to reach from Bombay to London. When the French railways are completed, it will be much shortened. The expresses and the mail having left Malta by steamer for Marseilles, the generality of the passengers proceed onward by sea: the steam-boats belonging to the Peninsular and Oriental Company, bring their passengers, call at Gibraltar on their way, and land at Southampton, four or five days after the expresses had reached England.

It is beyond all question that steam-boats have been the great engine in the establishment of this magnificent system; and Southampton-once merely a pleasure town-has the honour of showing what can be done in despatching and affording accommodation to such steamers. How accurately and punctually all the arrangements are planned; and how utterly impossible

would it have been to organize such a system in the days of sailing vessels! On the 3rd and the 20th of every month, at a fixed hour, a steamer leaves Southampton for Gibraltar and Malta, and reckons so exactly on the time of reaching the last-named port, that overland travellers, starting from London four or five days later, and, proceeding via Paris and Marseilles, count with the utmost confidence on reaching the steamers, at Malta, just ready to receive them, and to carry them to Alexandria.

This Mediterranean trade is by no means the only one which steam-transit has established at Southampton. Besides the traffic which has Malta for its centre, and which branches from thence to Constantinople and the Black Sea towards the north-east, and towards Alexandria and the India route on the southeast, many of the Southampton steamers do not enter the Mediterranean at all, or only just touch it at Gibraltar. Three times in the month there is steamtransit to Vigo, Oporto, Lisbon, Cadiz, and Gibraltar. The Voyage to Lisbon' in 1847 is performed in about the same time which Fielding spent at an alehouse in Ryde, waiting till the wind blew in the right direction! The steam-transit from Southampton to Havre, now that the Rouen and Havre Railway is finished and opened, will become more and more important. The passage from Southampton to the Channel Islands, Jersey and Guernsey, has also become a regular feature in steam conveyance from this port.

But there is one great feature of Southamptonsteaming yet to notice: one which is hardly of less importance, in a political and social point of view, than the Alexandria passage,-this is the West India Mail. The change here effected has been very remarkable. The old West India sailing-packets, effective though they were when compared with others of their class, often presented a dreary prospect to the passenger for the length of time he was destined to remain on board. But now, with the well appointed fleet of steamers, the passage is most regular and convenient, and reminds one more of the punctual arrangements of the Post-office than of the ever-fluctuating nature of oceantransit. The commercial economy of this system is somewhat as follows:

On the 2nd and 17th of the month a West India mail steamer leaves Southampton, having on board. the letters and newspapers which were despatched from London the morning of those very days. In order to meet the wants of this extensive system, the steamers are nearly twenty in number, and all of a large, commodious, and highly finished kind: each one will accommodate about one hundred passengers, with a degree of ease and comfort quite unintelligible to those who only know the petty miseries of half-cargo, halfpassenger sailing vessels. In about a week the steamer runs nearly thirteen hundred miles, or not far short of two hundred miles a day, and stops at the island of Madeira, which is quite a Brighton or Hastings for wealthy invalids. Mails and some of the passengers are landed, a few fresh provisions are taken

land and the United States are but parts of the same great empire of mind-peopled by the same great and wonderful race-talking the same language-thinking the same thoughts-and steaming on the same principle !"

The young ports of Birkenhead and Fleetwood whisper to us that, by and by, when they are a little older, they also will claim to be ranked among the important places of our western coast. As to the wonders of Birkenhead, we can by no means treat of them in a few lines. We pass at once to Fleetwood. This port, which sprang into existence from the spur given to enterprise by railway communication, belonged to Sir Hesketh Fleetwood, who, appreciating the advantageous position of the mouth of the river Wyre, resolved to build a town, quay, docks, and railway stations, and endeavour to establish a miniature Liverpool. The customs' and other government officers sanctioned the plan; capital was forthcoming; and the progress already made has been surprisingly great.

A regular system of steam transit has been established, from Fleetwood to Ardrossan, on the way to Glasgow; from Fleetwood to the Isle of Man; from Fleetwood to various ports in the north of Ireland; and from Fleetwood to some of the Lancashire and Cumberland ports.

Cumberland asks for half a dozen words, and then we have done. Already the locomotive is about to dive into the lake district from the western shore; and we may yet see Maryport, and Workington, and Whitehaven busy steam-port towns. Whitehaven has already steam communication with Liverpool and with Belfast.

And now, having carried the reader round the coast, and allowed him to stop a little while at all the chief ports, to see how the contest between the Sail and the Steamer, and the mutual impulse of the Rail and the Steamer, are going on; we may safely leave him to decide the question whether steam-boat transit is not one of the most striking features of "THE LAND WE LIVE IN."