Though The Cunard Steamers Are Said By English People To Be As Near
Perfection As Steamers Can Be, I Was
Sorry not to return in a clipper.
There is something so exhilarating in the motion of a sailing-vessel,
always
Provided she is neither rolling about in a calm, lying to in a
gale, or beating against a head-wind. She seems to belong to the sea, with
her tall tapering masts, her cloud of moving canvas, and her buoyant
motion over the rolling waves. Her movements are all comprehensible, and
above-board she is invariably clean, and her crew are connected in one's
mind with nautical stories which charmed one in the long-past days of
youth. A steamer is very much the reverse. "Sam Slick," with his usual
force and aptitude of illustration, says that "she goes through the water
like a subsoil-plough with an eight-horse team." There is so much noise
and groaning, and smoke and dirt, so much mystery also, and the ship
leaves so much commotion in the water behind her. There do not seem to be
any regular sailors, and in their stead a collection of individuals
remarkably greasy in their appearance, who may be cooks or stokers, or
possibly both. Then you cannot go on the poop without being saluted by a
whiff of hot air from the grim furnaces below; men are always shovelling
in coal, or throwing cinders overboard; and the rig does not seem to
belong to any ship in particular.
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