68 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. IV 



tinguished in the war-time as a " donkey-frigate." To 

 the laity it would seein that a ship journeying to unknown 

 regions, when the lives of a couple of hundred men may, 

 at any moment, depend upon her handiness in going 

 about, so as to avoid any suddenly discovered danger, 

 should possess the best possible sailing powers. The 

 Admiralty, however, makes its selection upon other 

 principles, and exploring vessels will be invariably found 

 to be the slowest, clumsiest, and in every respect the 

 most inconvenient ships which wear the pennant In 

 accordance with the rule, such was the Rattlesnake ; 

 and to carry out the spirit of the authorities more com- 

 pletely, she was turned out of Portsmouth dockyard in 

 such a disgraceful state of unfitness, that her lower deck 

 was continually under water during the voyage. 



Again, p. 100 : 



It is necessary to be provided with books of reference, 

 which are ruinously expensive to a private individual, 

 though a mere dewdrop in the general cost of the fitting- 

 out of a ship, especially as they might be kept in store, 

 and returned at the end of a commission, like other 

 stores. A hundred pounds would have well supplied the 

 Rattlesnake; but she sailed without a volume, an applica- 

 tion made by her captain not having been attended to. 



P. 103 : 



Of all those who were actively engaged upon the 

 survey, the young commander alone was destined by in- 

 evitable fate to be robbed of his just reward. Care and 

 anxiety, from the mobility of his temperament, sat not so 

 lightly upon him as they might have done, and this, 

 joined to the physical debility produced by the enervating 

 climate of New Guinea, fairly wore him out, making him 

 prematurely old before much more than half of the 

 allotted span was completed. But he died in harness, the 

 end attained, the work that lay before him honourably 



