These records indicate the remarkable sailing qualities of the clipper ships, for, if the quickest single runs are added together--the _Stag Hound’s_ 13 days from Boston Light to the equator with an allowance of 2 days for the run from the equator to Cape St. Roque; the _Samuel Russell’s_ 16 days from Cape St. Roque to 50° S.; the _Young America’s_ 6 days from 50° S. in the Atlantic to 50° S. in the Pacific; the _Live Yankee’s_ and _Mary L. Sutton’s_ 16 days from 50° S. to the equator; and the _White Squall’s_ 14 days from the equator to San Francisco--we find that these six ships sailed long distances at the rate of a passage of 67 days from Boston Light to San Francisco, or 22 days less than the record of the _Flying Cloud_ and _Andrew Jackson_--89 days. Yet no one of the six ships which made these splendid runs made the passage from an Atlantic port to San Francisco in less than 100 days. The records of the other ships are even more remarkable, for allowing 20 days as the outside limit of the four longer runs, with 10 days from 50° S. in the Atlantic to 50° S. in the Pacific and 2 days from the equator to Cape St. Roque, we find that no less than 157 runs were made over distances of thousands of miles, most of them considerably within an average rate of 92 days from Sandy Hook to San Francisco, or well within 3 days of the fastest record time. These records prove, if proof were needed, that the reputation of American clipper ships for speed does not rest upon the fast passages of a few ships, but is based upon the established records of many swift vessels. Judged by any standard of beauty, the American clipper ships were handsome, noble-looking vessels. During the past fifty years I have seen many fleets of men-of-war and merchant ships, besides naval reviews, and at various times the squadrons of yachts that gather each summer in Cowes Roads and Newport Harbor, but I have never seen a collection of vessels which could compare in stately beauty with the fleet of American clipper ships which lay in the harbor of Hong-kong during the autumn of 1858. The American clippers were all built of wood and their hulls were painted black from the metal up, though the _Invincible_ carried a crimson stripe, and the _Challenge_, _N. B. Palmer_, _Sweepstakes_, and perhaps two or three others, a stripe of gold. Their yards and bowsprits were usually painted black, the lower masts white to the tops, with the tops and doublings above scraped bright and varnished, but the _Challenge_, _Young America_, and _Mandarin_ carried black lower masts, and a few other ships kept their lower masts bright.