ccasion, as soon as fairly placed between the knight-heads; "something
one might look for a week, in England, without finding it."

"I beg your pardon, sir, but I'm not of the same way of thinking. I was
just telling the forecastle lads, down there, that there's many a
nobleman and gentleman at home as has finder hills than these, made by
hand, in his parks and gardens, just to look at."

"The d--l you have! And what did the forecastle lads down there say to
that?"

"What could they, sir? It just showed the superiority of an Englishman
to an Italian, and that ended the matter. Don't you remember the
Injees, sir?"

"The Indies! Why, the coast between Bombay and Calcutta is as flat as a
pancake most of the distance."

"Not them Injees, sir, but t'other--the West, I mean. The islands and
mountains we passed and went into in the Rattler; your honor was only a
young gentleman then, but was too much aloft to miss the sight of
anything--and all along America, too."

As Strand was speaking he glanced complacently round, as if to intimate
to the listeners what an old friend of the captain's they enjoyed in the
person of their boatswain.

"Oh! the West Indies--you're nearer right there, Strand, and yet they
have nothing to compare to this. Why, here are mountains, alive with
habitations, that fairly come up to the sea!"

"Well, sir, as to habitations, what's these to a street in Lunnun? Begin
on the starboard hand, for instance, as you walk down Cheapside, and
count as you go; my life for it, you'll reel off more houses in half an
hour's walk than are to be found in all that there village yonder. Then
you'll remember, sir, that the starboard hand only has half, every Jack
having his Jenny. I look upon Lunnun as the finest sight in nature,
Captain Cuffe, after all I have seen in many cruises!"

"I don't know, Mr. Strand. In the way of coast, one may very well be
satisfied with this. Yonder town, now, is called Amalfi; it was once a
place of great commerce, they say."

"Of commerce, sir!--why, it's nothing but a bit of a village, or, at
most, of a borough built in a hollow. No haven, no docks, no
comfortable place even for setting up the frame of a ship on the beach.
The commerce of such a town must have been mainly carried on by means of
mules and jackasses, as one reads of in the trade of the Bible."

"Carried on as it might be, trade it once had. There does not seem to be
any hiding-place along this shore for a lugg