Of this
volume which I experienced among the scenes and people of which it is too
imperfect a record.
* * * * *
Although bi-weekly steamers ply between England and the States, and many
mercantile men cross the Atlantic twice annually on business, and think
nothing of it, the voyage seems an important event when undertaken for the
first time. Friends living in inland counties, and those who have been
sea-sick in crossing the straits of Dover, exaggerate the dangers and
discomforts of ocean travelling, and shake their heads knowingly about
fogs and icebergs.
Then there are a certain number of boxes to be packed, and a very
uncertain number of things to fill them, while clothing has to be provided
suitable to a tropical summer, and a winter within the arctic circle. But
a variety of minor arrangements, and even an indefinite number of leave-
takings, cannot be indefinitely prolonged; and at eight o'clock on a
Saturday morning in 1854, I found myself with my friends on the landing-
stage at Liverpool.
Whatever sentimental feelings one might be inclined to indulge in on
leaving the shores of England were usefully and instantaneously
annihilated by the discomfort and crush in the Satellite steam-tender,
in which the passengers were conveyed, helplessly huddled together like a
flock of sheep, to the Canada, an 1850-ton paddle-wheel steamer of the
Cunard line, which was moored in the centre of the Mersey.
