NOTES OF A NATURALIST. 



privilege to feel drawn towards them by the hourly 

 suggestions received during a sea-voyage. Nor is it 

 possible to make light of the simpler pleasures caused 

 by the satisfaction of mere curiosity, when that is 

 linked by association with the pictures on which the 

 fancy has worked from one's earliest childhood on- 

 ward. The starting of a covey of flying-fish, the 

 fringe of cocos palms rising against the horizon, the 

 Southern Cross and the Magellanic clouds, the reversed 

 apparent motion of the sun from right to left — none 

 of them very marvellous as mere observed facts — are 

 so many keys that unlock the closcd-up recesses, the 

 blue chambers of the memory, which the youthful 

 imagination had peopled with shapes of beauty and 

 wonder and mystery. 



Some thrill of delightful anticipation was, I pre- 

 sume, felt by many of the passengers who went on 

 board the royal mail steamer Don in Southampton 

 Water on the 17th of March, 1882. Amid the usual 

 waving of handkerchiefs from the friends who re- 

 mained behind on board the tender, we glided sea- 

 ward, and by four p.m. were going at half speed 

 abreast of the Isle of Wight, The good ship had 

 suffered severely during the preceding winter on her 

 homeward passage from the West Indies, when the 

 heavy seas which swept her upper deck had carried 

 away the covering of her engine-room, stove in the 

 chief officer's cabin, and severely injured her com- 

 mander, Captain Woolward. On this occasion our 

 voyage was easy and prosperous, and nothing occurred 

 to test severely the careful seamanship of Captain 

 Gillies, who had taken the temporary command. 



