and cruel, big-headed sharks, which, indeed, followed us almost all the way to England (the fact is that now, when so many cattle are thrown overboard, the Atlantic abounds with sharks), and lovely flying-fish like streaks of silver flashing along the deep and boundless blue ocean. Of these latter one flew on board. It met with a cruel fate. It was eaten by the first officer of the _Assyrian Monarch_ for breakfast. It ought to have choked him. It did nothing of the kind; he, hardened sinner that he was, enjoyed it greatly, and said that it was as good as a whiting. In the Gulf Stream we found the usual number of whales and porpoises. The latter would play around the bow or race along the side of the ship in considerable quantities of all sorts of sizes. There were other fish of which I know not the names to be seen occasionally leaping out of the water as high and repeatedly as possible, as if a shark were in their midst seeking whom he might devour. One sight I shall never forget in the Gulf Stream. It was that of a tortoise. I was leaning over the ship’s side, when something big and round seemed to be coming to the surface. I could not make out what it was; then all at once the truth flashed upon me as he wobbled along, paddling with his fins, his head erect, his little eyes peering at the ship as if he wondered what the dickens it was, and what business it had there. He seemed to be treading the water. ‘I saw him but a moment, But methinks I see him now.’ The sight gave me quite an appetite, though my friend Sir Henry Thompson will insist upon it that turtle soup is made of conger-eel, but in the wide Atlantic one has time to think of such things; day by day passes and you see nothing but the ocean—not even a distant sail, or the smoke of a passing steamer.