The Sun.
London, England, 1866-10-18 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

Miss Braddon's New Magazine.

Belgravia a London Magazine.
_ _

Conducted by

M. E. Braddon. No. I.
As a first appearance this is upon the whole per-
ectly satisfactory. It will disappoint only the

cavillers at Miss Braddon's immense popularity. It
will more than realise the expectations formed in

regard to her new enterprize by the majority of her
admirers, and as such of her very cordial well-wishers.
Externally and internally Belgravia is refreshingly
attractive. It is the most propitious coming forth
of a new adventurer amongst our monthly pe-
riodicals, that has taken place since the

inauguration of the career of the Corn-
hill. And as the ripe golden hue of W.

M. Thackerary's Magazine gladdened the eye

with a welcome touch of colour, to say nothing of

the arabesqued design artistically traced upon that
same rich colouring by the graceful pencil of the

draughtsman—precisely in the same way now does
M. E. Braddon's Magazine, in its turn, both by its

delicate green and umber colouring, and by the dainty
device by which those contrasting hues are blent
together and interwoven, gladden the eye by the
mere charm of its external appearance. Like the
Cornhill both in size and price, Belgravia is

adorned with doable the number of the Corn

hill's full-page embellishments. Whereas the
Cornhill has always contented itself with two,

Belgravia appears with no less than four highly
elaborated illustrations. In regard to the mere

material part of the " getting up" of it—in the
matter that is simply of paper and of typography—it
competes not only with the very best of its shilling
contemporaries, but with the older high-priced
monthly magazines, such as Maga and Regina, or,
reversing the sequence and speaking of them lite-
rally, such as Fraser and Blackwood. Three metri-
cal and ten prose contributions make up the con-
tents of this initial number of Belgravia. Some

among the latter, it is true, we cannot but regard
as so much mere padding. We can't help looking

upon them, in other words, as having been thrown

in, somewhat as straws are in the manufacture of
bricks—just for the purpose, we may presume, of
holding the other materials together. Speaking of the

articles to which we are here taking exception as o.

so many mere makeweights, we would pass them by
at once with a simple curt enumeration of their
titles: " African Martyrology," by Winwood Reade,
beginning with Clapperton and ending with Sir

Samuel Baker—"AnAdventurous Investigation" be
ing a delineation of Manx madmen and mad women,
tediously spun out, and painfully out of place as it
appears to us—an Oxford sketch, entitled " In the
Schools Quad"—and No. I. of aseriesof Belgravian
Prose Ballads (self-descriptive, this one, of
"The Chaperone") a simple and flagrant eccen-
tricity. " A Fireside Story, told by the Poker,"
promises, by its title, to be better than it proves to
be. The " Feast of St. Partridge, at Park Hall,"
however, is not only vivacious, but delightful from
first to last. "Market-street, Manchester," again,
is another of those animated outpourings of discur-
sive chat, in regard to which George Augustus Sala
has long stood without any competitor—but never
more conspicuously than since the time when (about
twolyears ago) he first took, like Young Dorrit to
be "of the streets streety." " Love in November,"
by Mortimer Collins, is a snatch of erotic verse that
one might have looked for more confidently
from Algernon Swinburne than from any
one else. The Rev. Blomfield Jackson's lines
on the " Slain at Sadowa" are utterly marred by the
inharmoniously absurd effect of the first verse of
the opening stanza. Evelyn Forest's " Indictment,"
the other metrical contribution not yet particu-
larised, being suggestive, by a very few words in-
deed, of a very glowing picture, a pictuee pencilled
with only too much passion, but with exquisite
grace, by C. J. Staniland. Another over-impas-
sioned picture is the one by E. K. Johnson, embel-
lishing the serio-comic historical record about
" Swells," in which Antique Swells are shown to us,
while in the enjoyment of a classic symposium. The
writer of this same entertaining paper on Swells,
has evidently acquired a mastery of his subject
before sitting down to dilate upon it, as he does,
most appreciatively. lie depicts and understands
I perfectly the Fine Gentleman under all his vary-
ing aspects, namely, as the Coxcomb, the Fop,
the Blood, the Beau, the Exquisite, the Dandy, and
the Swell. Speaking of the noblest type of them
all—the Swell—he says, and says truly :
"Yet these heads of theirs never bowed down before the
face of their enemies, which leads me to observe upon a
very remarkable feature in the idiosyncrasy of a swell.
Though gilded, painted, and perfumed,—with tender toes
made tenderer by a reckless employment of leather, and
white hands made whiter by a judicious use of kid, —this
phenomenon of civilised life was never found to bo defi -
cient in spirit. Perhaps to be a swell at all—to defy the
scoffs of other creatures, and set completely at naught the
contempt of the wise—argues so large an amount of assur-
ance, that after it, nothing in creation can exist too appal-
ling to be faced with the profoundest confidence and com-
posure. Be this as it may, the histories of the Indian
mutiny, the Crimean war, and similar periods of horror and
bloodshed, attest, as must be confessed, to this redeeming
attribute in a thoroughbred swell ; who is thus as much to
be dreaded by his enemies in war, as friends, with any re-
spect for their own complacency, would dread him iu
sweet piping times of peace.' "
The full length portrait, however, as it has here
been drawn with admirable skill to the very life, is
worth the giving here, or worth the reflection here,
shall we say, by means of quotation :
" The S well ! wonderful offspring of the most intricate
art ! Conscious of his own superlative excellence, and
freezingly indifferent to the gibes of vulgar ridicule, see
how stately he threads his way through the mazes of ob-
servant crowds, and admiring thronged assemblies ! There
aro two well-defined varieties of the Swell which we must
remark almost every day of our lives : the soft fragile
creature, upon whom the lightest breezy seems to fall with
a too ungentle force ; and the defiant S well, whose haughty
frowns and devouring looks are apparently borrowed hem
the aborigines of New Zealand. Fairness, thinness, effemi-
nacy, weakness, together with pearls, turquoise, and silver
ornaments, are the specialities-of the former; whereas the
latter who is by nature sable-haired, olive-skinned, strong-
built, and robust, delights in green and red, and never
misses an opportunity of introducing in his apparel as
many gold bosses, rubies, garnet; horse-shoes, and death's-
heads as is consistent with the canons of swelldom ; and in
this respect swelldom is not niggardly. They have certain
family features, however, which aro common to both, and
without which they would not be Swells. No aspirant to
either degree would, without whiskers, pass for anything
but a spurious and impudent pretender. It is in vain to
commence swellism, if neither nature nor cantharides have
bestowed this prerequisite. Besides, the culture of the
whiskers supplies the thoroughbred Swell with the main
business of his life. Shave him from ear to chin, and his
occupation is gone. Cover over that inexpressive region
of the human countenance with the luxuriance needed,
and what with washing, brushing, greasing, perfuming,
and stroking, he has enough to do to occupy all those valu-
able hours when he is not showing off the fruits of his
manipulations in public. Then all Swells are, in the ela-
boration of their more trifling accessories, works of the
highest finish. They are stippled all over and in every
part, principal or subordinate, like a fine miniature on ivory;
and the effect is so artificial and precious, that framing and
glazing seems the next thing to be done, though in charity
(rather t 'them than others) we must stop short of hanging
them up. Now, quitting his exterior, let us look to what
he has, or rather has not, in him. Not much conversation;
not a very rich stock of ideas ; not at all a copious vocabu-
lary. Every portionless widow is a horror ;' every pen-
niless maid 'a fright ;' an ordinary acquaintance a fel-
lab ;' men of fortune 'trumps;' a friend who accepts one's
bills a brick ;' and those old 'uns who don't 'regular muffs
and duffers.' Wnat he abhors is beastly ;' what he does
not abhor is ' jolly ;' aud what he loves—and he disdains to
love anything else—is himself. Aud with respect to all
the enjoyments of existence he is simply passive. Hs was
never surprised, amused, or contented since he was born.
Pleasures bore him; people bore him ; his creditors bore
him; the routine of life bores him; the weather boreshitn;
the first day of the week bores him : the Opera on the last
bores him. The only emotion to which he is liable is dis-
gust; and there is so little heartiness about this, that when
he owns to it, it looks only like a remote objection. Then
he eats without any sign of relish ; drinks only to remove
depression, or create au unnatural sensation, which, when
fully obtained, affords no satisfaction ; and there is so
little vital sensation between his sleeping and waking
hours that he is conscious of no agreeable refreshment in
his slumbers, or pleasurable excitement in the activities
which follow."
And now, having said and quoted thus much of,
and from, No. I. of Belgravia, we have to speak but
of two other contributions, making up the full com-
pliment of the contents of this the initial number
of Miss Braddon's New Magazine. We have re-
served our reference to them purposely thus until
the very end, because in bidding adieu for a while
to the sew periodical, and withiug it all possible SUO

FAST MEN•

A SKETCH BY "WHIZ."
(From the Sporting Review.)
Notwithstanding the patronage of Augustus Ctesar, the
mentorship of Mceeenas, and the friendship of Marcus
Tullius, Cicero, and Publius Virgilius Maro, Horace was
one of the fastest men of his age, and as a man of the world
had a thorough knowledge of human nature, men, and
manners; and he was the first man who brought lyric
poetry to any degree of perfection amongst the Romans,
and there is no doubt, from hie odes and satires, was a
swell of the first water, loud in his apparel, which oft pro-
claims the man, and a promenader in the Campus Martins
and the Circus Maximus, and a constant attendant at the
Forum. We fancy him a sort of cross between Count
D'Orsay and the late lamented Earl of Chesterfield, with a
dash of Tom Moore in his composition. He was a gallant
—a perfect Don Juan, and his armours with Lydia, Chloe,
and Lyee most engaging. He was faithless in the extreme,
but evidently fonder of Lydia than his other loves. When
Lydia upraids him for his affection for Chloe, what says
Horace ? "If our former love returns, and unites us by a
brazen (not, as often at the present day, golden) yoke, what
if Chloe, with her golden locks, be shaken off, and the door
again opened to repudiated Lydia ?" Lydia replies with
much pathos, " Though you were brighter than as a star,
of more levity than a cork, and more passionate than the
blustering Adriatic, with you I should love to live, and
with you I would willingly die."
" Tecum vivere amem, tecum obeam libens."

But enough of the ancients. In the Middle Ages there
was Henry 11. with Fair Rosamond, Edward IV. who had
his Jane Shore, and Charles 11. his Nell Gwynn, and sub-
sequently George 11. his huge elephants and his white
mice, so ably described by Thackeray ; but we are not sur-
prised at his loves for these angels or otherwise, as the case
may be. We all woo them and win them for weal and woe,
and as Shakapere says—
" Win her with gifts if she respect not words ;
For costly gifts, in their silent kind,
More than quick words do move a woman's mind?

We now come to George IV., the gamblers, and gaming
houses, the bane of all good, and which were now in the
ascendant at the west end of London ; and many
of the
gaming houses merged into the then new Crockford's
Clubhouse in St. James'-street. Crockford was a partner
in Wattier's Club in Piccadilly, where play was carried on
to a great extent ; and report states that Hughes Ball,
called "Golden Ball," lost £45,000 at a sitting. During
the progress of the new building in St. James'-street, there
was a removal to Pall Mall, whilst Crockford laid the foun-
dation stone of that princely fortune ho eventually amassed.
Luck never seems to have deserted him, and his winnings
have been stated to have reached in one year £lOO,OOO.
In 1828 the club was formally constituted. A committee
was formed, and the chair was filled by the Earl of Sefton,
and 300 noblemen and gentlemen enrolled their names as
members ; and Ude was engaged as French cook at £l,OOO
a year. Forty-two servants, in and out of livery, were
engaged on this establishment. Of the 300 members not
more than 70 were playmen, who played games of chance
—hazard, for instance, whilst others played at whist,
ecarte, and games of science, but declined partaking in the
amusement and excitement of the dice-box. The game of
hazard was played in a small front room on the second
floor, and that room was never shown to visitors, who re-
quired a ticket to visit the morning play, which commenced
at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, and continued till 7. At
11 o'clock the real play began, the bank putting down
£lO,OOO, and the stakes may be said to have been un-
limited.
I cannot conclude this sketch without observing that Old
Crockey was a man of the most humane and benevolent
disposition. He never discharged a servant if he could
possibly avoid it, and he has been known to read a strong
moral lesson to one as to his future conduct in life. Ho
had a splendid freehold estate at Newmarket, where his
young wife and family resided, and were greatly re-
spected by the inhabitants, and particularly by the
poor, who often felt the benefit of their humanity and
generosity.
There were also several minor silver play-houses in the
neighbourhood of Leicester-square that we have visited
to see life, which was all the fashion in the days of
Tom and Jerry; in fact, we all tried to be Corinthians
of the first water, and we thought of the beautiful lines of
Milton

cess upon the delightful path upon which it has runners, and who received as much as an ex-Lord Chan-
already by its very first step advanced so far and so cellor.
adventurously, we would fain speak of it by pre- The
andraen ofh the present day seem adiff
ofexcess
tracealto
ference as at its best. Both these contributions are smokingg obliteratesw and obfuscates the andabsurd
e finer tacu faculties, is a
purely imaginative. Both, in fact, are stories. One— problem for the more astute philosopher. But when we find
a miniature story which is to be related in no more a young man—a very young man -giving upwards of
than three parts (of which the first part is here given £2,000 for a yearling (as a sporting writer observed to us
to us in its entirety)—is anonymous. The other, more the other day, who was at the sale) worth £5OO and no
ambitious in its character as a work of art of far
more, notwithstanding the value of the Derby, as the cog"
nosceuti immediately laid £lO,OOO to £2OO against him for
more considerable dimensions, is the grand attrac- the Derby of 1868, we think he must bo wrong in his judg-
tion with which Belgravia opens—the piece de resist- ment, or have taken too much champagne on the lawn.
once with which it undertakes to satisfy the appetite,
month by month, of even the most insatiable of its
devourers—being nothing less than the new serial
story by the Editress herself—a story entitled " Birds
of Prey," from the hands of the authoress of " Lady I `"" 11111 -
Audley's Secret," and of so many other renowned
tales of enthralling interest. The " Iron Casket" is
the title, by the way, of the smaller (anonymous)
story, here very effectively commenced —a tale of
the travaux forces. Both it and the " Birds of
Prey" will be found to have been exquisitely
illustrated—the former, that is " The Iron
Casket," by F. J. Skill, the latter, that is Miss
Braddon's own romance by M. Ellen Edwards. Four
chapters leading off the "Birds of Prey" have already
taken us far on into the interest of the plot and into
the thick of the intricate mysteries among which
some of the principal characters of the narrative
are now seen to be getting inextricably entangled.
Bloomsbury is the familiar scene in the midst of
which the story opens. " The Birds of Prey" being
manifestly those two congenial brothers—one a
surgeon dentist, the other a horsey kind of
attorney —Philip Sheldon, the dentist and
George Sheldon, the attorney. Scattered
plentifully enough, here and there, through
the opening chapters of the new tale, are some of
those inimitable touches which more than anything
else almost that can be specifically particularised
indicate what one speaks of as the master-hand. Such
minute yet vivid touches, let us say, as that in
which old Mrs. Woolper is spoken of as caring in her
capacity as Philip Sheldon's housekeeper for the in-
terests of the hard, strong, black-whiskered young
man of thirty, or rather for the interests, as Miss
Braddon puts it, " of the black-eyed baby she
(the old housekeeper) had nursed three and
thirty years ago !" Or such another touch—
so slight yet so startling—a touch this time not
emotional in its way, but half weird half gro-
tesque—as where Philip, while wandering down
stairs in the very dead of the night on some wicked
errand, when all the house is hushed in sleep_
comes into his professional torture chamber, and we
read—as from under the hand of Henri de Balzac—
" The tall horsehair chair looked unutterably awful
in the dim glimmer of the taper, and a nervous person
would almost have fancied it occupied by the ghost
of some patient who had expired under the agony
of the forceps !" Miss Braddon is evidently in full
force, and writes accordingly —her new story being
already as enthralling as her new magazine promises
to be successful.

,
(fn rt
,--f;

HER MAJESTY,

BALMORAL, Tuesday.
The Queen went out in the morning yesterday
with Princess Christian, and drove in the afternoon
with Princess Louise, attended by the Duchess of
Roxburghe.
Princess Louise rode in the morning, attended by
the llon. Emily Cathcart.
The Duke and Duchess of Aumale dined with the
Queen and the Royal Pamily.

To Australasia via Panama.

" Open fly
With impetuous recoil and jarring sound
The infernal doors, and on their huge hinges grate
Harsh thunder. I fled, and cried out
Death !' Hell trembled at the hideous
Name, and sighed from all her caves,
And back resounded Death !' "
Amongst all the vicissitude of life and the various phases
of human nature in her best and worst form, perhaps
gambling is the most fatal. We remember a man—a young
nobleman—having a capital, on coming of ago, of £200,000,
and an income of .£75,000 a year. He might have been a
Prince of Wales in those times, as there were few Crightons
afloat, but he took to handling the dice box ; and as every
body knows, or ought to know—as Crockford once said, he
could not live under the sacrifice of a nobleman an hour—
the capital soon went. He became a mere tool in the hands
of his creditors and his dear friends the Jews—the vaga-
bond Jeu•s ! and he subsequently subsisted on £5,000 a year
out of his very fine estates in Derbyshire and Nottingham-
shire. We also knew another man of a different calibre, a
much greater rogue and fool. He married a black-diamond
heiress, of the North of England district. He left her as too
black or too stupid ; and he, being a good-looking fellow,
she loved him; and after he loft her she settled £4,000 a
year on him. He gambled on the Stock Exchange, and is
now living in retirement in the country with a bare subsis-
tence ; and, for excitement sake (a ruling passion), he has
turned religious. We need not go on multiplying examples
of stupidity. Everybody knows there is either a rogue or
a fool born every minute ; but we prefer the former. As
Old Weller says, you may circumvent him somehow, as he
wanted Sam to circumvent the housemaid, or himself the
widow of the Markis of Granby.
Perhaps two of the fastest men of their day were Colonels
Leicester and Lincoln Stanhope ; and Colonel Berkeley,
Lord Segrave, and Earl Fitzbardinge-1 believe these men
were both too clever to be gamblers, because they knew the
dead odds against which they would have to play. But
such was the innate love for gambling amongst all classes
of the community that open betting was allowed at all the
races, in booths, especially Epsom ; and huge fat women
under large umbrellas kept watch and ward at roulette
tables for the lower orders on the course, as there was na A
division under Inspector Walker, perhaps one of the most
cunning of his craft, and who rivals Ruthven, Forester, and
George Ledbetter, vi ucitvriQty, and 139w-stmt

A passenger by the first mail steamer on this
route has sent to an Australian paper a narrative of
the journey. He writes :—" I have come in the
pioneer ship of the new line, the Rakaia, which has
carried the first mails. My ticket was No. 1. We
left Southampton on Saturday, June 2, in the
Atrato, a magnificent steam frigate of 1,967 tons
register, 3,126 tons burden. We anchored early on
the 16th in the capacious harbour of St. I homas%
having made the run of 3,630 miles (actual dis-
tance) in 13 days and 14 hours. The enginesmade
mcre than 14 revolutions per minute, each turn of
the wheels propelling the ship nearly 24 yards.
Twenty hours were run at half speed, and we had
a strong head wind. At St. Thomas's four ships
awaited our arrival, and in the course of the day
proceeded on their way to their various destinations,
my own lot being on board the Tamar. We had
about 30 passengers and 30 tons of cargo, contained
in 700 packages, all of which had to be transhipped
in the course of the day and under a blazing :-.1111.
No sooner was the work effected than we began our
life on board the Tamar, which, favoured by a strong
trade wind, made the run to Colon-1,060 miles--
in four days 15 hours, and the captain informed me
that it could have been done in 22 hoars less, had
there been any object to gain, but it was useless to
make speed, because the ships at Panama going
north, south, and west would not be ready to re-
ceive their passengers till the 24th. Disembarked
at Colon, or Aspinwall, as the Americans term it,
we mount the cars on the 22d, and plunge into the
wild and exquisitely beautiful scenery of the
Isthmus. We cross the immense chain of the
Cordilleras at a depression, so that we have not to
ascend more than 254 feet above Pacific high-water
mark. The total length of the railway is 47 miles;
the fare is included in your ticket from England
to the Antipodes. For the most part the rail 15
carried through alluvial plains or savannahs—b.!'
the edge of morasses—along the bank of the
Chagus and Obisco rivers, through dense forests
of exceeding richness and beauty of foliage and
flowers. The overwhelming fertility of the soil is
indicated by a reeking mass of vegetation which,
covers the whole face of the country, and would
speedily choke up the railway itself but that it is
kept in check by gangs of men, whose work it is to
conflict with this prodigal growth. Arriving at
Panama, the most picturesque and imposing town
along the west coast, stately, but comfortless, we
found the Rakaia, in which the voyage across the
Pacific was to be made, waiting for us. She had
made the run from Milford Haven, 11,315 miles, in
46 days and 11 hours, with two stoppages for Neil'
involving a detention of seven days and a half, and
a delay of three days in the Straits of Magellan,
owing to heavy weather. She left Panama on the
24th for the longest run on any mail route in the
world. When the Rakaia left Panama her weight'
including engines, coal, and cargo, was 3,200 ten
and it must be regarded as a triumph of mechanical
skill and science that the application of 2iewt. 0'
coal should drive this mass through the water at the
rate of a mile in six minutes, and that this should be
repeated for 27 or 28 days in continuity until the
whole breadth of the Pacific, 6,540 miles, has been
passed over. The Rakaia is a very comfortable 01P
with all sorts of convenience for passengers, 0.
her ventilation is good, but it seeems to me that itsl
a serious defect for any ocean-going steamer, in,
tended for long passages, not to be fitted, by means
of tanks or an inner skin like the Great Eastern, ~,.'
take in water ballast, and thus to preserve the tor:
and gravity of the vessel. In consequence of th,,
want of such loading, the Rakaia has tumbled about
and rolled greatly during the last 2,000 miles, affect-
ing not only her company, but also her working'
We left Taboga, an island about 12 miles from
Panama, where ships anchor and take in coals be,
cause the bay nearer the shore is shallow, at 2
on Sunday, June 24. Our course lay south, in order
to clear Cape Mata—a low point 80 miles distant'
and forming the western arm of the Gulf ; thence
to the Galapagos, sighting and leaving them on the
starboard hand. From the Galapagos, the captain'
who has had long experience in command of stealll.
ships, and is evidently a master of his craft in 10
higher departments and scientific knowledge, took
a great circle course that would carry us by t_
cairn Island to a certain point on the New Zeal
coast, whence he could at any time diverge to esPat
Palliser. From the Galapagos we had the Huenb°lcie
or equatorial current in our favour, and the tra' 0
winds blew softly.We accomplished half our distancao
in 12i days. During this period the weather
0..
deliciously mild and enjoyable. We were in the .4.4
pies. The thermometer generally stood about
deg., but the atmosphere was so pure and invigore
ing that it was a luxury to inhale its freshness, an
,i
at night the vault of heaven seemed to have enlare`frg
and the stars to have become more lustrous, 0110
to the absence of moisture and the diaphaneityuf t
t,
A
atmosphere. On Sunday evening, July 8, we pas-se ,
Pitcairn, but as it was dark and a heavy swell O:,
ning, we durst not near the shore. The island le.lo
habited, but, being out of the usual course of Ships,
communication is infrequent, and a heavy swell reilj's
ders landing difficult. No sooner had we passed ttla
island than we found we had left the tropics. ;of
pleasant weather, and fallen at once into vvin
storms and cold. The sea raged, the winds Wto
fierce, and the ship, lightened of her coal, begat' „i
roll heavily. After two gales of great severity ll'ee
blown themselves out, we began to fear that our is..
of a rapid passage would be disappointed ; then
eel
vouring winds sprang up, and theengines, refreshio..
by cold water, propelled the ship with greater Yeb'ey,
city, and we recovered lost time ; but it was t„rit
found that the rate given by the log and the 1"),..
done by the propeller gave a much less result by °lO,
servation than was expected, proving a strong tee
rent towards the east. A third gale of greater .I°l
and endurance dashed our hopes, and for seiv' At
days the powers of the ship were heavily tasked' eon
about 800 miles from Cape Palliser a patch of gra,
water, with much weed, was passed, and on 53tiod
day, the 21st, the weather cleared, and a fine. ~,hted
speeded us on to our desired haven.' We slgrg,3
Pallisenal. The total distance run has been bone,
miles. The engines made 1,519 502 revolutle.,o-
and 861 tons of coal were consumed. The then 013
meter between Panama and Pitcairn ranged
90 deg. to 75 deg. ; between Pitcairn and ra,
from 69 deg. to 49 deg. On the 22d of Jlllle
004
W
arrived at ellington, New Zealand. eat
route is of great value to Aew Zealand. The.tgeont
difficulty is the very wide stretch of ocean dpi s to
any place for coaling, &c., so that the shiP.l'ecoo
leave either end very heavily freighted, and in
bad
of accident may be in distress or continuonst be
weather; may be near her terminus, and of tb°
short of fuel to take her home. The voyage,,e,„, 0,0
Rakaia, an experimental trip, absolutely t“
.:„01e-
over au untried way, without any collected
ledge of winds and currents, has been made wlere•
few hours of the computed time, and must ry, to
fore be regarded as a success most satisfact° tb°
o
her captain and officers, and encouraging
t ,
°
company and the New Zealand public. I lie
interest whatever in the company. I Was world
passenger. I have been sailing half round thel't 100
in the wake of the setting sun, and have coin° a oat
to his rising. I find I have lost a day, drOPP'
of ow; log."