The _Morning Star_ foundered on a passage from Samarang to U.K. in 1879. The _Shalimar_ was bought by the Swiss and the _Morning Light_ by the Germans, who renamed her _J. M. Wendt_. The _Queen of the Colonies_ was wrecked off Ushant in 1874, when bound from Java to Falmouth. The _Legion of Honour_ went ashore on the Tripoli coast in 1876, after changing her flag. The Fate of “Marco Polo.” The _Marco Polo_ in her old age was owned by Wilson & Blain, of South Shields; then the Norwegians bought her. After years in the Quebec timber trade, she was piled up on Cape Cavendish, Prince Edward Island, in August, 1883, and on the 6th her cargo of pitch-pine and the famous old ship herself were sold by auction and only fetched £600. And so we come to the end of a short but wonderful period in the “History of Sail.”—_Sic transit gloria mundi._ Footnote. [A] Her first voyage was the one to Mobile. PART II.—“THE WOOL CLIPPERS.” (_Wood and Composite Ships_). With tallow casks all dunnaged tight, with tiers on tiers of bales, With cargo crammed from hatch to hatch, she’s racing for the sales; A clipper barque, a model ship, a “flyer” through and through, O skipper bluff! O skipper brave! I would I went with you! —G. J. BRADY. The Carriers of the Golden Fleece. If it was the discovery of gold that founded Australia’s fortune, the Golden Fleece and the Wheat Sheaf have set it upon a rock. It was the gold fever that swept the great tide of emigration in the direction of the Southern Cross and carried the star of the Liverpool shipowners upon its flood, but that star began to set as soon as the output of alluvial gold began to diminish, as soon, indeed, as the great soft-wood clippers of the Black Ball and White Star began to grow water-soaked and strained, for their prosperity may be said to have ended with the sixties and had scarcely a longer run than the classification of their ships. But the percentage of emigrants landed by these ships, who stuck for any time to the elusive hunt for gold, was very small; and the greater number of the gold seeking emigrants eventually settled and worked on the homesteads and great runs of the interior, with the natural result that there was a large and steady increase in the output of wool, hides, tallow, wheat and other land products. The huge Liverpool emigrant ships, however, were not fitted for the economical transport of these products to their central market in London. They were too big for one thing, for, in those early days, wool and tallow dribbled into the big ports in small amounts; also the repair bills of these soft-wood clippers were an ever increasing item to put against their freight receipts.