To an indifferent sailor, a long voyage is not by any means a pleasant thing; and I quite agree with the sage who said that a man on board a ship was a prisoner, with the additional risk of being drowned. One feels a continual yearning for the green fields, fresh butter and milk; and the continual noise, confusion, and other disagreeables, are more trying to temper and patience than can be imagined by a quiet stay-at-home gentleman. We left England in the coldest weather that had been remembered for years. A month's daily skating on the Serpentine was a bad preparation for a week's calm, under a burning sun, within a degree of the line, twenty-seven days afterwards. The frames of Englishmen, however, appear to be better adapted for the changes of climate than are those of the inhabitants of any other country. We passed the Bay of Biscay with the usual rough weather, had a distant look at Madeira, and entered the trade-winds, without having met with any other disaster than a sort of mutiny amongst the crew, who, headed by a contumacious coloured giant, refused to attend divine service on a Sunday. A detachment of half a dozen men, with the captain and the mate at their head, soon brought the gentleman in question to reason; forty-eight hours in irons, on bread and water, entirely changed his view of the matter, and he came out from the encounter a very lamb. I frequently remained on deck in the first watches of the night, during the pleasant sailing in the trade-winds, between the Canary Islands and the west coast of Africa, a part of the world that has always been remembered by me for its beautiful climate. The light breeze caused little more than a ripple on the water, which sparkled with millions of phosphorescent lights, and the slow, easy motion of the vessel, with the occasional groaning of the blocks and bulk-heads, as a stronger puff of wind than usual caused an additional strain upon them, was like the heave and swell of some leviathan lungs, while the graceful curve of the studding-sails, spreading far out on each side, gave to the ship the appearance of some vast animal, intent on a journey of mystery and importance, and busy in thus muttering to itself a rehearsal of its mission. I preferred resting in the stern-boat, and watching the space around, to breathing the close atmosphere of the badly-ventilated cabins, with their odours of bilge-water and mouldy biscuit, or tossing about restlessly in the narrow berth, to the disturbance and sometimes death of vagrant cockroaches, who had trespassed under the blanket, and whose number was legion.