This process of feeding the curiosity, was well enough exemplified by a series of very exciting, though often painful and seemingly discouraging, incidents that occurred every year on the coast already mentioned, as forming the scene where I passed the holydays. Ten leagues, or thirty geographical miles, due north of the house in which I was born, lies the Bell Rock, just off the mouth of the Tay, and close to the northern side of the great estuary called the Firth of Forth. At the time I am speaking of, this rock was justly considered one of the most formidable dangers that the navigators of those seas had to encounter; for its head was merged under the surface during greater part of the tide, and at no time did it make any shew above the water. There was nothing to be done, therefore, but to keep well clear of the mischief, or, as seamen express themselves, to give the rock a wide birth. Ships, accordingly, bound for the Forth, in their constant terror of this ugly reef, were not content with giving it ten or even twenty miles of elbow room, but must needs edge off a little more to the south, so as to hug the shore, in such a way, that, when the wind chopped round to the northward, as it often did, these overcautious navigators were apt to get embayed in a deep bight to the westward of Fast Castle. If the breeze freshened before they could work out, they paid dearly for their apprehensions of the Bell Rock, by driving upon ledges fully as sharp, and far more extensive and inevitable. Thus, at that time, from three to four, and sometimes half a dozen vessels used to be wrecked every winter, within a mile or two of our very door. Perhaps there are few more exciting spectacles than a vessel stranded on a lee-shore—and especially such a shore—which is fringed with reefs extending far out, and offering no spot for shelter. The hapless ship lies dismasted, bilged, and beat about by the waves, with her despairing crew clinging to the wreck, or to the shrouds, and uttering cries totally inaudible in the roar of the sea—while at each successive dash of the breakers, the number of the survivors is thinned, till, at length, they all disappear—the gallant bark goes to pieces—and the coast, for a league on either side, is strewed with broken planks, masts, boxes, and ruined portions of the goodly cargo, with which, a few hours before, she was securely freighted, and dancing merrily over the waters. But it is the greatest of all mistakes to suppose that the actual contemplation of such disasters, still less the description of hardships, has any tendency to divert a young mind from following its original bent, towards a profession of such varied and high excitement as that of the sea. At all events, the effect of each succeeding shipwreck I witnessed, was only to stimulate me more and more to pursue the object of all my thoughts, waking or dreaming.