E--SIGNS OF ITS REVIVAL--OUR GREAT DOMESTIC
SHIPPING INTEREST--AMERICA'S FUTURE ON THE SEA.

Even as recently as twenty years ago, the water front of a great seaport
like New York, viewed from the harbor, showed a towering forest of tall
and tapering masts, reaching high up above the roofs of the water-side
buildings, crossed with slender spars hung with snowy canvas, and braced
with a web of taut cordage. Across the street that passed the foot of the
slips, reached out the great bowsprits or jibbooms, springing from
fine-drawn bows where, above a keen cut-water, the figurehead--pride of
the ship--nestled in confident strength. Neptune with his trident, Venus
rising from the sea, admirals of every age and nationality, favorite
heroes like Wellington and Andrew Jackson were carved, with varying skill,
from stout oak, and set up to guide their vessels through tumultuous seas.

[Illustration: "THE WATER FRONT OF A GREAT SEAPORT LIKE NEW YORK"]

To-day, alas, the towering masts, the trim yards, the web of cordage, the
quaint figureheads, are gone or going fast. The docks, once so populous,
seem deserted--not because maritime trade has fallen off, but because one
steamship does the work that twenty stout clippers once were needed for.
The clipper bow with figurehead and reaching jib-boom are gone, for the
modern steamship has its bow bluff, its stem perpendicular, the "City of
Rome" being the last great steamship to adhere to the old model. It is not
improbable, however, that in this respect we shall see a return to old
models, for the straight stem--an American invention, by the way--is held
to be more dangerous in case of collisions. Many of the old-time sailing
ships have been shorn of their towering masts, robbed of their canvas, and
made into ignoble barges which, loaded with coal, are towed along by some
fuming, fussing tugboat--as Samson shorn of his locks was made to bear the
burdens of the Philistines. This transformation from sail to steam has
robbed the ocean of much of its picturesqueness, and seafaring life of
much of its charm, as well as of many of its dangers.

The greater size of vessels and their swifter trips under steam, have had
the effect of depopulating the ocean, even in established trade routes. In
the old days of ocean travel the meeting of a ship at sea was an event
long to be remembered. The faint speck on the horizon, discernible only
through the captain's glass, was hours in taking on the for