2 SUNSHINE AND SPORT IN 



American with pride in his own. With the Pilgrim 

 Fathers, whose gaze was riveted on the fairy coast- 

 line of Devonshire, nowhere perhaps equalled on 

 the seaboard of their adopted home, the sensation 

 may have been different, but the midland scenery 

 between London and Liverpool is even more de- 

 pressing than that between New York and Wash- 

 ington. A boat train is not a social success. 

 Britons thrown suddenly in the company of 

 strangers behave not unlike new antelopes en- 

 larged in their paddock at the Zoo. They sniff 

 and stare ; they show suspicion and dislike of 

 their neighbours ; finally, they shake down in their 

 new quarters, forget their nervousness, tolerate 

 their fellows and browse as if their lives hung on 

 it. Each one takes elaborate stock of the rest, 

 in some cases to no purpose, for he may never see 

 them again, since the train is feeding two steamers, 

 the pfiant Cunarder for New York and a trim little 

 Canadian boat for the Dominion. 



Within a few minutes of four, the train slows 

 down at Riverside, where lie both vessels, bow to 

 stern, the gigantic Caronia dwarfing the other with 

 her three tiers of decks and six or seven hundred 

 feet of steel and timber. Up several gangways 

 climbs the crowd, each unit for itself, in a mad 

 struggle for the state-rooms, courtesy and dignity 

 thrown overboard. The heavy baggage goes from 

 the van up a separate gangway ; the lighter pack- 

 ages give the porters opportunities of playing pitch- 

 and-toss, so that old travellers carry small and 

 precious breakables themselves. Little time is 

 wasted in dock, and both vessels soon cast off, first 

 the Canadian, who draws so little water that she 



