1894.] ESSAYS. 67 



keroseue oil beneath our feet the coutemplatiou of that blaze was any- 

 thiug but agreeable. It is a terrible thing to stand and see your prop- 

 erty consumed by the tlames on the laud, but at sea when the flames 

 get beyond control you have to choose between two elements. Those 

 who have been placed in such an extremity invariably choose the 

 water. I once watched a burning ship sailing down the Delaware. 

 The pilot was about to leave when the captain invited him into the 

 cabin. Striking a match to light a cigar, the gas which had formed 

 in the closed cabin from the cargo of petroleum ignited, burning the 

 ship. 



The rigging of a ship is very hard for a landsman to remember. 

 Some are surprised to And that the main sheet is a rope. Then there 

 is the bonnet, waist, stays, braces, shrouds, martingale, etc. 



While lying at a Cuban port the barque Sarah Frazier arrived from 

 Europe ; while on the voyage, in mid-ocean, the captain had lost his 

 only son overboard. He was 16 years old, and had been brought up 

 on the ocean so that he could navigate the ship as well as his father 

 could. His watch was on deck at the time of the accident, which 

 happened at midnight. His mother heard the cry, "Man overboard," 

 and jumped up exclaiming, "It is AUie." It was very pathetic when 

 they showed me the empty stateroom and unrolled the chart showing 

 the pencil mark the boy had drawn indicating their course. How the 

 accident happened was never found out. The captain told me the 

 hardest thing he ever did was to fill the sails and leave his son out 

 there in the ocean. 



Some people are surprised to learn that you cannot anchor anywhere 

 on the ocean. They do not stop to consider that the average depth of 

 the ocean is four miles. In order to become a successful navigator 

 you must have experience and know all the ropes as the sailors say, 

 and the knowledge cannot be' bought. A young man, whose father 

 was possessed of wealth, had a ship nicely fitted out, which he under- 

 took to navigate. Having but little experience he bought books of 

 navigation and started on his voyage. They got underway all right 

 and clear of the harbor. Elated with his success he turned to take a 

 last look at the receding shore, when the wind blew a few pages over. 

 When he consulted the book again he came to the order to let go the 

 port anchor. The order on board ship is no sooner given than it is 

 obeyed. The result was that the young man gave up the command to 

 the first ollicer and went to the foot, and his experience, which money 

 could not buy, was the road by which he became master of the art of 

 navigation, which has been spoken of as the grandest outcome of 



