The great steamships of most lines running to distant foreign parts are _comparatively_ easy and steady in their motions, and there is really more chance of being attacked by the _mal de mer_ on an English or Irish Channel boat than there is on the voyage across the Atlantic. The waves in such channels are more cut up and “choppy” than are those of the broad ocean. The employment of the twin‐boat, _Calais‐Douvres_, has mitigated much of the horrors of one of our Channel lines. It is curious to note the fact that Indians often use a couple of canoes in very much the same manner as did the designer of the doubled‐hulled vessel just mentioned. The writer has seen, in the Straits of Fuca, natives conveying all their possessions on the top of planks, placed over and lashed to two canoes. One suggestion for the improvement of the steamboat service across the Channel to France is to construct an enormous vessel, 650 feet long and 150 wide, a ship as long as the _Great Eastern_ and twice her beam, to be propelled by both paddles and screws. She is to be capable of carrying several trains, and is to have a roofed station on board, with all the necessary saloons. Floating platforms are to connect this great steam ferry‐boat with the shore rails, so that it can start or arrive at any time of the tide. “Are you a good sailor?” asks one passenger of another just after leaving Liverpool. “Oh, I suppose I’m no worse than anybody else,” is, perhaps, the answer; while some are bold enough to answer, “Yes.” But Dickens noticed that the first day very few remained long over their wine, and that everybody developed an unusual love of the open air. Still, with the exception of one lady, “who had retired with some precipitation at dinner‐ time, immediately after being assisted to the finest cut of a very yellow boiled leg of mutton with very green capers,” there were few invalids the first night.