AN AMERICAN FARMER IN ENGLAND. 



CHAPTER H. 



At Sea Incidents Sea sociability A Yam Sea Life Characters 

 English Radicals. 



At Sea, May 23. 



TT"E are reckoned to-day to be about one hundred and fifty 

 miles to the westward of Cape Clear ; ship close-hauled, 

 heading north, with a very dim prospect of the termination of our 

 voyage. It has been thus far rather dull and uneventful. "We 

 three have never been obliged to own ourselves actually sea-sick, 

 but at any time during the first week we could hardly have 

 declared that we felt perfectly well, and our appetites seemed 

 influenced at every meal as if by a gloomy apprehension of what 

 an hour might bring forth. Most of the other passengers have 

 been very miserable indeed. I notice they recover more rapidly 

 in the steerage than in the cabin. This I suppose to be owing to 

 their situation in the middle of the ship, where there is the least 

 motion, to their simple diet, and probably to their having less 

 temptation to eat freely, and greater necessity to "make an 

 effort," and move about in fresh air. 



"We have met one school of small whales. There might have 

 been fifty of them, tumbling ponderously over the waves, in sight 

 at once. Occasionally one would rise lazily up so near, that, as 

 he caught sight of us, we could seem to see an expression of 



