immediate advantage of the boats—the women all screamed together—and we had a pretty tolerable taste of the horrors to be witnessed on the eve of a shipwreck. The hubbub at length ended in the appointment of a deputation to wait upon the captain, and solicit him to shorten sail. The deputation went upon its mission, but soon afterwards returned from the cabin to their constituents with the report that they had been politely requested by the functionary in question to mind their own business. The storm, however, gradually abated, and things and persons resumed their ordinary aspect. Great was the anxiety evinced every time the log was thrown, to ascertain our rate of sailing, and at noon of each day, to know our daily run, and our precise locality on the terraqueous globe. It is difficult for an emigrant to reconcile himself to less than eight or nine knots an hour. He may put up with seven, or even six, provided the ship is in her direct course, but he regards everything below that as a justifiable ground of murmuring and complaint. Sometimes it is the ship that is wrong, and sometimes the captain, sometimes the rigging, and at other times, all is wrong together. But to do the emigrant justice, if he is in the surly mood when he is making but little progress, he makes amends for his ill-humour when the vessel is making a good run. We, one day, made but about twenty miles, and I apprehended a mutiny. On another we made two hundred, and nothing could exceed the hilarity and good-humour of those on board. At one time, the Seagull was the merest tub, a disgrace to her owners, and to the mercantile navy of the kingdom. At another, she was one of the best vessels afloat; the captain one of the best sailors on the sea; and the crew the cleverest set of fellows in the world. But all this time it was the same ship, the same captain, and the same crew. The diversity of opinion was the result of extraneous circumstances which caused us at different times to take different points of view. If the weather was favourable, and we made good way, the ship, captain, and crew, got all the honour and glory; if it was adverse and our progress was retarded, the ship, captain, and crew, had to bear all our sinister glances and ill humours. One morning, after we had been about ten days out, our minds were all made up that we were pretty near the banks of Newfoundland, when a fellow-passenger, evidently not very deeply versed in human nature, had the hardihood to inform us that he had, but the day before, seen the mate’s log book, from which it appeared that we were as yet but five hundred miles to the westward of the Irish coast. I can scarcely understand to this day, how it was that he escaped being thrown overboard.