THE INLAND PASSAGE. 13 



A wealthy magnate may go in a big yacht to Florida, 

 give good dinners aboard and live in grandeur and 

 luxury, and he will see about as much — not quite — 

 as if he had left his yacht at home ; or the hasty- 

 plate-of-soup man may take a little steam launch 

 and stave her in on the first snag or oyster rock he 

 runs her against. But if the traveller and his 

 friends hire or buy a light-draught sailing vessel, 

 they will require more time, but they can go almost 

 everywhere and see absolutely everything. It was 

 just such a vessel that I had built for use in the shoal 

 Great South Bay of Long Island — a sharpie, to give 

 its nautical appellation — of sixty feet length and 

 fifteen beam, with two state-rooms, a cabin having 

 four comfortable berths and over six feet head-room, 

 and a cuddy for the men and for cooking, although 

 we had an auxiliary cook stove in the cabin. This 

 vessel was intended to carry six passengers and two 

 men ; but boats of seventeen feet length and a cata- 

 maran have safely made the j^assage to the St. John's 

 River and are there now, so that a much smaller 

 craft would do. The advantage of the sharpie style 

 of construction was that the yacht only drew two 

 feet of water, and as I proposed to run entirely by 

 chart, and not to use the services of a pilot, this was 

 an inestimable advantage. We could have braved 

 the battle and the breeze of the Atlantic and gone 

 outside all the way, but those who know most of the 

 ocean care least to have to do with it unless equipped 

 on the most thorough basis to encounter its buffets. 

 As an old sea captain said \o me : — ^^AVlien I go to 



