n the world. For all of us it possesses a certain
interest, but to some more so than to others. I refer to those who love
to wander in imagination amidst the departed glories of Greece and
Rome--empires which lived, moved, and had their being when our
forefathers were but tattooed savages.

As we advance, the sea begins to widen, the mountainous outline of the
Spanish coast trends boldly to the northward; whilst the African shore
grows indistinct and flatter, save where here and there some mighty peak
rears its head from out of cloudland. Since leaving "Gib." we have been
under the escort of shoals of porpoises, who ever and anon shoot ahead
to compare rate of speed; or, by way of change in the programme, to
exhibit their fishy feats under the ship's bows. Whether there be any
truth in the mariners' yarn, that the presence of porpoises generally
indicates a change in the wind, I will leave for you to form your own
opinion; but certain it was, that on the present occasion, the wind did
change, and to a "muzzler" illustrating in the most practical manner
that our ship could be just as lively on occasion as other pieces of
naval architecture. The stomachs of some of our younger hands, too,
seemed to have suddenly acquired a sympathetic feeling with the
movements of the ship, which, strangely enough, impressed them with a
desire to reveal what they had had for dinner. The ship, though, dashed
onward like a mad thing, regardless of the agony she was inflicting on
some of her human parasites.

This was but the commencement of our sufferings for now the heat was
beginning to annoy us. To us who could go on deck when we wished it was
bad enough, but to those poor fellows who had to swelter and toil in the
stokehole it must have been very trying, though compared with what was
yet to come this was a mere bagatelle. We had encountered that blasting
wind known as the "sirocco"--the scourge of the Mediterranean--which
after gathering force and heat in the African deserts comes with its
fiery and sand-laden breath to sap the moisture from all who have not
the natures of salamanders. Fortunately we soon passed beyond its
sphere of action.

Darkness rapidly sets in in these regions of eternal summer. The sunny
shores and genial climes of the Mediterranean, where the very touch of
the air seems a perfumed caress, lack only one thing to make them a
paradise. Those pleasant hours which obtain in our less favoured land
after the sun has