attributes to his having given up smoking and drinking thirty-one years ago, not having once indulged in either from that time until now. FOOTNOTES: [13] For at least a hundred and fifty years the Post Office Department had maintained a fleet of armed mail “packets.” They had stations at Dover, Harwich, Holyhead, Milford, Yarmouth and Falmouth, the last-named being the headquarters of the fleet. During the time of the American war, 1812-15, no fewer than thirty-two sanguinary battles were fought with American privateers by the Falmouth packets, which, in a majority of instances, successfully resisted their assailants. [14] Sir John Burns in _Good Words_ for 1887, p. 261. [15] Fry’s “History,” p. 240. [16] The invention is claimed for Canada in Chapter X., under the heading of “New Brunswick.” CHAPTER IV. NORTH ATLANTIC STEAMSHIP COMPANIES. THE COLLINS LINE. The earliest formidable rival to the Cunard Line was the famous Collins Line, founded in New York in 1848, and which derived its name from Mr. E. K. Collins, its chief promoter, who had previously been largely interested in sailing ships, and more particularly in the splendid line of New York and Liverpool packets, popularly known as the Dramatic Line. The Collins Line started with a fair wind, so to speak. It was launched by a wealthy company, amid an outburst of national applause, and was liberally backed by the Federal Government, with an ill-concealed determination to drive the Cunarders from the seas. But the illusion was destined to be soon dispelled, for, as Charles MacIver put it in writing to Mr. Cunard, “The Collins Line are beginning to find that breaking our windows with sovereigns, though very fine fun, is too costly to keep up.” Disasters ensued. In ten years the losses had become stupendous, and the enterprise culminated in a total collapse. The Line began with a fleet of four magnificent wooden paddle-wheel steamships, the _Atlantic_, _Arctic_, _Baltic_ and _Pacific_, each 282 feet in length, and of 2,680 tons burthen. They were built by W. H. Brown, of New York, and combined in their construction and machinery the then latest improvements. The passenger accommodation was far superior to that of the Cunard steamers of the period. Each of them cost $700,000, an amount so far exceeding the original estimate that the Government had to make the company an advance. The credit of the country being in a sense at stake, provision was made for a liberal subsidy. $19,250 per annum had been the original sum specified for a service of twenty round voyages, but that was found to be totally inadequate, and the Government eventually agreed to increase the subsidy to $33,000 per voyage, or $858,000 per annum for only twenty-six voyages, which was more than double what had been paid to the Cunard Company for a like service. The Collins Line, however, promised greater speed than their rivals, and that counts for much in popular estimation.