BY THE NEW FOREST iii 



Other mail-carrying lines enter the port of South- 

 ampton — some as callers, some to stay. The Inman 

 Line, changing its name and its port, now sails its 

 ships mider the American flag, and has left Liverpool 

 for Southampton. The North German Lloyd steamers 

 also call here for mails and passengers. 



Southampton has been the scene of many sorrows, 

 as w4ien the Amazon was burnt at sea, and the Rhone 

 went down at St. Thomas ; and those who saw the 

 crowd of grief- stricken applicants at the steamship 

 agents' offices or around the dock-gates, when the 

 heavy news came in, will not readily forget the sight. 

 It has had its moments of triumph, too — when the 

 Sovereign in person opened the new dock ; when, 

 again, the first ship of the United States' transplanted 

 line, with the American mail on board, was, in the 

 language of the advisory telegrams of my youth, 

 ' steaming up Southampton Water ' ; and w'hen, quite 

 lately, T.E.H. the Prince and Princess of "Wales 

 opened there the largest graving-dock in the world, 

 750 feet long. 



The telegraph-service, too, at Southampton has 

 had its romance. At the entrance of the Solent, on a 

 little promontory which juts out from the New Forest, 

 is a solitary isolated fort — Hurst Castle. There is, or 

 was when I went there twenty years ago, a rambling 

 building near at hand, which serves as offices, and 

 perhaps as barracks. In this building a steady 

 young telegraph clerk, belonging to the Southampton 

 office, was employed in the seventies to signal the 



