trifles
at home!'

JUNE 16.--'By some odd chance a TIMES of June 7 has found its way on
board through the agency of a wretched old peasant who watches the end
of the line here. A long account of breakages in the Atlantic trial
trip. To-night we grapple for the heavy cable, eight tons to the mile. I
long to have a tug at him; he may puzzle me; and though misfortunes,
or rather difficulties, are a bore at the time, life, when working with
cables, is tame without them.--2 p.m. Hurrah! he is hooked--the big
fellow--almost at the first cast. He hangs under our bows, looking so
huge and imposing that I could find it in my heart to be afraid of him.'

JUNE 17.--'We went to a little bay called Chia, where a fresh-water
stream falls into the sea, and took in water. This is rather a long
operation, so I went up the valley with Mr. Liddell. The coast here
consists of rocky mountains 800 to 1000 feet high, covered with shrubs
of a brilliant green. On landing, our first amusement was watching the
hundreds of large fish who lazily swam in shoals about the river. The
big canes on the further side hold numberless tortoises, we are told,
but see none, for just now they prefer taking a siesta. A little further
on, and what is this with large pink flowers in such abundance?--the
oleander in full flower! At first I fear to pluck them, thinking they
must be cultivated and valuable; but soon the banks show a long line of
thick tall shrubs, one mass of glorious pink and green, set there in a
little valley, whose rocks gleam out blue and purple colours, such
as pre-Raphaelites only dare attempt, shining out hard and weird-like
amongst the clumps of castor-oil plants, cistus, arbor-vitae, and many
other evergreens, whose names, alas! I know not; the cistus is brown
now, the rest all deep and brilliant green. Large herds of cattle
browse on the baked deposit at the foot of these large crags. One or
two half-savage herdsmen in sheepskin kilts, etc., ask for cigars;
partridges whirr up on either side of us; pigeons coo and nightingales
sing amongst the blooming oleander. We get six sheep, and many fowls
too, from the priest of the small village, and then run back to
Spartivento and make preparations for the morning.'

JUNE 18.--'The short length (of the big-cable) we have picked up was
covered at places with beautiful sprays of coral, twisted and twined
with shells of those small fairy animals we saw in the aquarium at
home. Poor little things