"Without tempest, with only rollers to deal with, and with a moderate wind right abaft, a cross wave will give your craft such a shock, that the ship's bell will strike, and if these big rollers with their sweeping motion, continue for any time, your masts will go by the board, your seams will open--you will be a wreck." So says the experienced Durville--gallant sailor, if ever there was one. And he tells us that he has himself seen waves from eighty to a hundred feet high. "These waves," he says, "only boarded us with their mere crests, or the craft must have been swamped. As it was she staggered, and then for an instant stood still, as though too terrified to understand what was the matter. The men upon the deck were for moments completely submerged. For four long hours that night this horrible chaos endured; and those hours seemed an eternity to turn one's hair grey. Such are the southern tempests, so terrible that even ashore the natives have a presentiment of their approach, and shelter themselves in caves." However exact and interesting these descriptions may be, I do not care to copy them; still less would I be bold enough to invent descriptions of what I have not seen. I will only speak briefly about tempests which I have seen, and which have, as I believe, taught me the different characteristics of the Ocean and the Mediterranean. During half a year that I passed at about two leagues from Genoa, on the prettiest shore in the world, at Nervi, I had in that sheltered spot but one little sudden tempest, but while it lasted it raged with a quite wonderful fury. As I could not, quite so well as I wished, watch it from my window, I went out and along the narrow lanes that separate the palaces, I ventured down, not indeed, to the beach, for in reality, there is none worthy the name, but to a ledge of black, volcanic rock, which forms the shore, a narrow path, often not exceeding three feet in width, and as often overhanging the sea at varying heights of from thirty up to sixty feet. One could not see far out; the spray continually raised by the whirlwind, drew the curtain too closely too allow of one's seeing far, or seeing much, but all that was to be seen was sufficiently frightful. The raggedness, the salient and cutting angles, of this iron-bound coast, compelled the tempest to make incredible efforts, to take tremendous leaps, as, foaming and howling, it broke upon the pitiless rocks. The tumult was absurd, mad; there was nothing connected, nothing regular; discordant thunders were mingled or followed by sharp shrill shrieks, like those of the steam engine; piercing shrieks, against which one only in vain tried to stop his ears. Stunned by this wild scene, which assailed sight and hearing at once, I steadied myself against a projecting wall of rock, and thus comparatively sheltered, I was better able to study the grandly furious strife. Short and chopping were the waves, and the