There are many who will sympathise with this description of the islands taken from a visitor’s book: “A Paradise surpassing Dante’s ideal, but alas! only to be attained by passing through three and a half hours of Purgatory.” For the voyage from Penzance to Scilly is not one to be treated lightly. Looked upon as a pleasure trip, it may be enjoyable or the reverse, according to the weather and the constitution of the passenger; but considered in the light of a test of “good-sailor”-ship it is, I think, without a rival. Do not be set up because you have travelled unscathed to Australia and back, or crossed to America without turning a hair. This little bit of the Atlantic may yet humble you! There seems to be something in the cross-currents between Scilly and the Land’s End which tries the endurance of even the most hardened sailors. How often does one hear it said in Scilly, “I used to think I was a good sailor, but----”; and that “but” speaks volumes! Even sea-captains, regular old sea-dogs who have spent a lifetime afloat, have been known, to their shame and disgust, to fall victims to Neptune on the Scilly passage. I never made a voyage in which less (or should I say more?) was expected of you. The steward gives you a friendly peep at intervals. “Feeling all right, I hope?” You never felt better in your life, and say so. “Well, please hold out as long as you can; my supply is limited.” And you almost feel that it would be ungenerous to disappoint his evident expectations by “holding out” to the end! But what matters three and a half hours of Purgatory when once one has attained to Paradise? And the passage weighs as nothing in the scale against the charms of Scilly. In the “good old days” things were very different from what they are now. You could not then make a return journey in the same day. Sailings were few and far between, and people prepared for going to Scilly as for a long voyage.