glories of the setting sun ; the stars were sought be-
low, the via lactea streamed over the ship's sides, and
the study of Neptune's palace under the sea appeared
far more fascinating than the study of Orion and the
Pleiades.
Sea-sickness is a great leveller. It prostrates pride, purges man of his conceit, makes him humble as a little child ; it is specially conducive to repentance and after repentance to resignation. I know of nothing, after the first fear of death has passed away, that makes one so ready to die. A great wave places its back under the ship and lifts you up, up, into the very clouds ; then it stands from under and you go down, down, with a tickling sensation within, until you stop 3'our breath waiting for the vessel to strike upon the bottom of the sea. Then comes a mingled pitching and rolling, when the innermost loses cohesion, oscil- lates, rotates and upheaves, when the foundations of the great deep are broken up within you, when the strong man bows himself as it were a woman grinding at a mill, and the mourners go about the cabin like apocalyptic angels, wailing as they pour their vials out; and by this unrest and the revels of devils with- in, the imaa;e of God is deo-raded into that of a self- acting hydraulic pump. The mind becomes concerned, the brow overcast; it is like clapping on the head a hope-extinguisher, and squeezing the body at once of every rest and comfort flesh aspires to ; as if the inner lining of the man were rolled up and wrung out down to the very dregs of gall and bitterness. Then the body assumes a doubling posture, the spinal column becomes flaccid and limpy, the victim is filled with a desire to sink to the floor or lie prostrate ; manhood oozes out at the finorers' ends, and Caesar becomes like a sick girl.
And all the while those Who escape these miseries regard this agony as ludicrous in the extreme. It is a capital joke to see the strong man brought low, to hear him swear and storm at every thing
