28 ISLES OF SUMMER. 
water, flowing in a stream a thousand times larger than the Mis- 
sissippi river, from hot equatorial regions, is always warm, and 
the air, loaded with ozone, saline and other health imparting 
ingredients, is as warm and pleasant as that which we breathe 
at our best seaside resorts in summer; storm-caught and ice- 
coated vessels run into it to thaw out.” But alas! all our ideals 
vanish into thin air and disappear forever the moment we at- 
tempt to seize them with our hands of flesh. The beautiful 
vision of the Gulf Stream exists for usno more. It will never 
return. Wehave been there. We were from eight to ten hours 
crossing it at an oblique angle. We rolled and tossed ‘in and 
over” it to the content of our hearts and the disturbance of our 
stomachs. As it piled up its huge waves higher than our ship, 
one after another of the passengers seemed to have ‘‘a call” to 
go somewhere else, and left the deck, first bending over the guard 
rail, with their faces turned mysteriously towards the angry 
waters, with an agonized expression, as though they had caught 
sight of some large sea serpent. One gentleman was asked by 
an innocent sympathizer if he was sick. The quick and forcible 
reply seemed to be perfectly satisfactory, <‘Do you think I am 
such a d—n fool that I am doing all this for fun?” Having 
personally paid unwilling tribute to Neptune, we turned our back 
upon the foam-crested billows and took refuge in our little sar- 
dine box below, where, with the port hole closed, we lay above 
the heaving bosom of this enchanting ocean-river. And now, 
ever and anon, upon all sorts of occasions, the Gulf Stream, disen- 
chanted, calls up the same memories and fills us with the same 
feelings of thankfulness and gratitude which Sancho Panza 
experienced whenever he thought of the blanket in which he 
was ingloriously tossed in the yard of the Spanish inn. The 
steamer in which we left New York, had carefully hugged the 
shores of the Atlantic States and kept out of it, and we skirted 
