some tangled nets.

I fully believe that more care is taken for the lives of others by
sailors at sea than in most cases on land where equal risks are run; but
there are dangers on the waves, as well as on the hills, the roads, and
even in the streets, which no foresight can anticipate, and no precaution
can avert.

The principal danger of a coasting voyage, sailing alone, is that of
being run down, especially on the thickly traversed English coast, and at
night.

As for the important question concerning the "rule of the road" at sea,
which is every now and then raised, discussed and then forgotten again
after some collision on a crowded river in open day has frightened us
into a proper desire to prevent such catastrophes, it appears to me that
no rule whatever could possibly be laid down for even general obedience
under such circumstances, without causing in its very observance more
collisions than it would avert, unless the traffic in the river were to
be virtually arrested.

On land the "rule of the road" is well enough on a _road_, where vehicles
are moving in one of two directions, but how would it do if it were to be
insisted upon at the place where two streets cross? Now the Thames and
other populous rivers are at times as much blocked and crowded by the
craft that sail and steam on the water as the crossing at Ludgate Hill is
by vehicles at three o'clock, that is, considering fairly the relative
sizes of the objects in motion, and the width of the path they must take,
their means of stopping or steering, and, above all, the great additional
forces on the water which cannot be arrested--_wind_ and
_tide_--moreover, at this London crossing the traffic has to be regulated
by policemen, not by a rule for the drivers, but by an external arbitrary
director.

The wonderful dexterity of the cabmen, carmen, and coachmen of London is
less wonderful than that of the men who guide the barges, brigs, and
steamers on the Thames, and it is perfectly amazing that huge masses
weighing thousands of tons, and bristling with masts and spars, and
rugged wheels projecting, should be every day led over miles of water in
dense crowds, round crooked points, along narrow guts, and over hidden
shoals while gusts from above, and whirling eddies below are all
conspiring to confuse the clearest head, to baffle the strongest arm and
to huddle up the whole mass into a general wreck.

Consider what would be the result in the Strand if n