76 
WATER AND WATER NAVIGATION. 
We failed out together, and the night foon came on, 
and a ftorm, then a hurricane, fo frightful that to me it 
feemed a carnival of all the wind-demons of the fkies. 
When the morning broke we were tolling about on the 
billows, and our captain with his glafs lighted the fteamer 
in the diftance labouring in the feas. “ She is making 
no fleam,” remarked Captain Packard, gravely; and then, 
as the old man telefcoped his glafs, he faid, folemnly— 
“ She cant live ; Jhe muft go down ! ” And the eye of 
our captain was in all probability the laft mortal eye that 
looked upon the haplefs, ill-fated “ Prefident.” She was 
never heard of more ! 
Twelve years later, in July, 1853, I failed for Europe 
in the Collins fleamer “Pacific,” returning in the “Ardtic” 
(fame line) in October. The fame month of the year 
following, the “ Ardtic ” went down off Cape Race with 
360 fouls on board. And fix months afterwards the 
“ Pacific,” taking the “ North’ard paflage,” fteamed out 
from Liverpool into regions of darknefs, where funlight 
never enters—and no man lived to tell the tale ! And 
fince then, how many more ? Alas ! how many ? 
And the winds and the waves fiill confpire againft us, 
and the principle of flotation in fhip-building remains 
to-day where Noah found it, and the Norfemen and the 
Vikings left it, and the ocean is ftill ftrewn with wrecks, 
and the deep is a graveyard ftill! And the crape and the 
moans of the mourners, and the lick hearts of the defo- 
