displacement of 9,500 tons and indicated horse‐power of 5,400, and carries coal enough for her entire voyage—some 3,000 to 4,000 tons. But she is not to remain unchallenged, for, at the time these pages are being written, the Barrow Shipbuilding Company is constructing for the Inman line Atlantic service a still larger iron vessel, with engines of 8,500 horse‐ power, capable of propelling her at the rate of sixteen or seventeen knots; she will have four masts and three funnels. And yet another vessel of equal or greater power has been put on the stocks for the Cunard Company. Again, the largest _steel_ steamship, or ship of any kind, has been launched at Dumbarton. She is intended largely for the cattle trade between the River Plate, Canada, and England. She is over 4,000 gross tonnage, and has been christened the _Buenos Ayrean_. The sums of money invested in the construction of these superb vessels are enormous. The _Orient_ is said to have cost, _without_ her fittings, little less than £150,000, her engines alone involving the expenditure of one‐third of that amount. And yet a third‐class or steerage ticket to the Antipodes by her costs only fifteen guineas, while the emigrant can go out to the United States or Canada by almost any one of the finest steamships of the various Atlantic services for six guineas. Many routes might, of course, be taken round the world, England being the eventual goal in all cases. As quaint Sir John Mandeville says, in the first chapter of his “Travels”:—“In the Name of God Glorious and Allemyghty, he that wil passe over the See to go to the City of Jerusalem, he may go by many Weyes, bothe on See and Lande, aftre the Contree that hee cometh fro: manye of hem comen to an ende. But troweth not that I wil telle you alle the Townes and Cytees and Castelles that Men schaslle go by: for then scholde I make to longe a Tale; but alle only summe Contrees and most princypalle Stedes that Men schulle gone thorgh, to gon the righte Way.” “Although,” says Mr. Simpson, the popular artist, in his work entitled “Meeting the Sun,” “the reference here is to Jerusalem only, yet in the Prologue he states that he was born in the ‘Town of Seynt Albanes,’ and ‘passed the See in the Yeer of Lord Jesu Christ MCCCXII, in the Day of Seynt Michelle, and hidne to have ben longe tyme over the See, and have reign and gon thorgh manye diverse Landes and many Provynces and Kingdomes and Iles, and have passed throghe Tartarye, Percye, Ermonye, the litylle and the gret; throghe Lybye, Caldee, and a gret partie of Ethiope, throghe Amazoyne, Inde the lasse and the more, a gret partie; and thorghe out many others Iles, that ben abouten Inde; where dwellen many dyverse Folkes, and of dyverse Maneres and Lawes, and of dyverse Schappes of Men.’” He adds further on in his “Boke” that going all round the world was not unknown even before his time.