28 AN AMERICAN FARMER IN ENGLAND. 



was lost some thirty years since. The captain says we passed 

 within ten miles of Cape Clear light without seeing it. He was 

 just right in his reckoning, and the vessels that went inside of us 

 were all wrong, and he thinks must have got into trouble. We 

 are now nearly up to Waterford, and off a harbor where, many 

 years ago, a frigate was lost, with fifteen hundred men. It is 

 foggy yet, and we can only see the loom of the land. 



Monday, May 27th. 



The Channel yesterday was thick with vessels, and I was 

 much interested in watching them. A collier brig, beating down 

 Channel, passed close under our stern. We were going along so 

 steadily before it that I had not before thought of the violence 

 of the wind. It was surprising to see how she was tossed about. 

 Plunging from the height of the sea, her white figure-head would 

 divide the water and entirely disappear, and for a moment it 

 would seem as if some monster below had seized her bowsprit, 

 and was taking her down head foremost ; then her stern would 

 drop, and a white sheet of spray dash up, wetting her foresail 

 almost to the foretop ; then she would swing up again, and on the 

 crest of the billow seem to stop and shake herself, as a dog does 

 on coming out of the surf; then, as the wind acted on her, she 

 would fall suddenly over to the leeward, and a long curtain of 

 white foam from the scuppers would be dropped over her glisten- 

 ing black sides. It was very beautiful, and from our quiet though 

 rapid progress, showed the superior comfort of a large ship very 

 strikingly. We have not rolled or pitched enough during all the 

 passage to make it necessary to lash the furniture in our room. 

 Afterwards, we saw a Welsh schooner, then a French lugger, 

 with three masts, then a cutter with one, all quite different in rig 

 and cut of sail from any tiling we ever see on our coast. 



About four o'clock, we sighted Tuscar light, and could see be- 

 yond it, through the fog, a dark, broken streak, on which we im- 



