It is a great treat in the fine weather to take that route. You are a little longer at sea—you glide along the south coast till you reach the Scilly Isles, and the ships of the company are all that can be desired. It is a great deal of trouble and expense to some to go with all their goods and chattels to Liverpool, then unpack them, and get them down to the landing-stage, and then repack them in one or other of the far-famed steamers of that busy spot, and all this you save if you patronize the ships of the Monarch Line, which carry chiefly cargo, with a few saloon passengers as well. We had a very heavy cargo on board the _Assyrian Monarch_ as we came back from New York. We carried 260 bullocks, besides cheese and grain, to make glad the heart and fill the stomach, and thus one felt that if the screw were to fail or the fog to hinder a rapid transit, there was corn in Egypt, and that there was something to fall back on. Happily, we were not driven to that alternative. We fared well in the saloon of the _Assyrian Monarch_; so well, indeed, that a poor elderly lady, who seemed at death’s door when we started, became quite vigorous, comparatively speaking, by the time we ended our voyage. We had more freedom in the way of sitting up late and having lights than is possible in a crowded passenger ship, and we came more into contact with the captain of the ship and his merry men. In the case of the _Assyrian Monarch_ this was a great advantage, as Captain Harrison is a good companion as well as an able navigator, and I felt myself safe in his hands, that is, as far as anyone can be safe at sea. Further, I felt that the chances were in my favour. The _Assyrian Monarch_ had carried over the Atlantic, in stormy weather, the highly-respected and ever-to-be-regretted by Londoners Jumbo; surely it could be trusted to perform the same kind office for myself in the summer season, when the air is still and the seas are calm; and so it did, though every now and then we encountered that greatest of all dangers at sea, fog, more or less dense, especially on the Banks of Newfoundland, where the ice-laden waters of the Arctic come in contact with the warmer waves of the Gulf Stream. As our course was very fortunately much to the south, we had a good deal of the latter. That Gulf Stream was a revelation to me. When I took my morning bath it seemed as if I were in warm water, and the new forms of life it fostered and developed were particularly pleasant to a casual observer like myself. There one could see the nautilus, or the Portugeuse man-of-war, as it is familiarly termed, in the language of the poet, ‘Put out a tier of oars on either side, Spread to the wafting breeze a twofold sail,’