weather, prevents the enormous shell of the boat from breaking in half. There are moments when one’s life hangs on a thread; here it hangs on an iron bar. That is better, perhaps, but it is not enough.” The fine vessels of the company then running were, although perhaps the most commodious in the world, hardly the safest. The distance between San Francisco and Japan is 5,000 miles, and, barring a few hundred miles on the coasts of the latter, the ocean is almost one grand calm lake. But cyclones occur in the Japanese seas when the high‐built American boats are not safe. Baron Hübner gives us some notes on the passengers on board, which included nine nationalities. Among them was a dignified and venerable Parsee merchant, a merchant prince in his way, who had wished to study European manners, and so had proceeded as far as San Francisco. What he saw there impressed him so unfavourably, that he immediately took passage back again. What he observed, indeed, filled him with disgust. “The men,” said he, “what a lack of dignity! Never in the streets of our towns will you be shocked by the sight of drunkards and bad women.” Hübner gives also some sketches of the officers on board. The chief engineer is described as a thoughtful and meditative man—a Roman Catholic, deeply imbued with the spirit of religious fervour, and spending his time in the alternate study of theology and practical mechanics. His cabin, opening on the one side to the deck and on the other to the machinery, contained a well‐selected, though small, library of scientific and classical books, and was adorned by pots of flowers, which he managed to keep alive by constant care, in spite of the sea‐breezes, for they had been given to him by his young and beautiful wife, whose portrait hung upon the wall. For a couple of weeks only in each three months could he see his better half. “Sweetly blows the western wind Softly o’er the rippling sea, And thy sailor’s constant mind Ever turns to thee. Though the north wind may arise, And the waves dash madly by, Though the storm should rend the skies, And vivid lightnings round me fly; Then I love thee more and more, Then art thou more dear to me, And I sigh for that dear shore Distant o’er the sea.”