o be employed
only on shore, it does not answer well on board, except in a calm; and,
moreover, the heat generated by the lamp was too much in a small cabin.
Even a single candle heats a small apartment, and it is well known that a
man can get a very good vapour-bath by sitting over a rushlight, with
blankets fastened all round.

{152} The best, according to my taste, were those of "Irish stew,"
"Stewed steak," "Mulligatawny," "Oxtail," and "Vegetable soup," all in
the order named. "Preserved peas" were not quite so good; but the other
viands were all far better than can be had at any culinary hotel, and
were entirely without that metallic or other "preserved" flavour so soon
discovered in such eatables, and even by a palate not fastidious. This
experience was fully confirmed afterwards in my Canoe Cruises in Holland,
in the Orkneys and Shetland, and in the Red Sea, Jordan, Nile, Abana,
Pharpar, and Lake of Galilee.

{156} Frenchmen have a trick of anchoring thus to escape a breeze. We
have seen them anchor on the African coast merely to avoid a hard-looking
cloud, whereas the real danger was in anchoring there at all.

{159a} See Frontispiece.

{159b} We shall hear of this pinch again further on.

{160} This latter construction is found to be very convenient, because
the cargo is at one end of the vessel and the machinery, and
paddle-wheels, and steering apparatus are all at the other end, so that
orders can be readily given to both by the captain. The "Express"
Company on the Seine has sixty of these steamers.

{161} It was, however, only an adaptation of the same principle I had
used in Swedish lakes, when my course was towards a bright sun so
dazzling in the water that I invented the plan of covering my eyes with
my straw hat, and steering the canoe by the bright reflection of the sun
on its cedar deck, which was of course by no means so unpleasant as the
beams of light glancing from the water itself. Surely it would not be
impossible to make the needle of a mariner's compass itself steer the
ship at least within half a point. The motion of the needle could
connect one or the other of two electro currents, and so set in instant
action a powerful purchase to act on the tiller.

{171} First thoughts of people and of countries are more striking, they
are only by chance at all true. I recollect asking an American, after
his visit to the English House of Lords, what struck his attention most;
and he