ly 370 English statute miles) in
twenty-four hours: this was a great performance. But it must not be
forgotten, that the United States claim to have attained a high
ship-speed before England had thought much on the matter; the
Baltimore clippers have long been known on the other side of the
Atlantic as dashing, rapid, little vessels, mostly either single or
double-masted.

It is to the opening of the China trade the present wonderful rivalry
may in great part be attributed. So long as European vessels were
cooped up stagnantly in Canton river, and allowed to trade only under
circumstances of great restriction and annoyance, little was effected
except by the tea-drinking denizens of Great Britain; but when, by the
treaty of Nankin in 1842, Sir Henry Pottinger obtained the opening of
the four ports of Amoy, Foo-tchow-foo, Ning-po, and Shang-hae, and
stipulated that foreign vessels should be allowed to share with those
of England the liberty of trading at those ports, there was a great
impetus given to ship-builders and ship-owners: those who had goods to
sell, thus found a new market for them; and those who could perform
the voyage most quickly, would have a quicker return for their
capital. This, following at an interval of seven or eight years the
changes made in the India trade by the East India Company's charter of
1834, brought the Americans and the French and others into the Indian
seas in great numbers. Then came the wonders of 1847, in the discovery
of Californian gold; and those of 1851, in the similar discoveries in
Australia.

Now, these four dates--1834, 1842, 1847, 1851--may be considered as
four starting-points, each marked by a renewed conquest of man over
the waves, and a strengthened but not hostile rivalry on the seas
between nation and nation. So many inducements are now afforded to
merchants to transact their dealings rapidly, that the ship-builders
are beset on all sides with demands for more speed--more speed; and it
is significant to observe that, in almost every recent newspaper
account of a ship-launch, we are told how many knots an hour she is
expected to attain when fitted. Every ship seems to beat every other
ship, in the glowing language employed; but after making a little
allowance for local vanity, there is a substratum of correctness which
shews strongly how we are advancing in rate of speed.

It will really now become useful to collect and preserve records of
speed at sea, in connectio