ed of the Arabian Jews;
and though, of course, you pay sailors' prices for them, yet even then
the sums given are not nearly so much as would be charged in England for
a far inferior feather.

On the eve of departure we were visited by a novel shower, composed of
sand and locusts, from the African desert. These things, unpleasant as
they seem to us, are, we are told, of as common occurrence here as rain
showers at home.

CHAPTER V.

"As slow our ship her foamy track
Against the wind was cleaving,
Her trembling pennant still look'd back
To that dear isle 'twas leaving."

ACROSS THE INDIAN OCEAN.--CEYLON.--SINGAPORE.--A
CRUISE IN THE STRAITS OF MALACCA.

September 21st.--Having, as it were, given the go-by to two continents,
we commence on an extended acquaintance with a third.

With sails spread to a S.W. monsoon we rapidly speed over that glorious
expanse of luminous sea where it is ever summer, and in whose pearly
depths living things innumerable revel in the very joy of existence.

Though hot, this part of the voyage is not unpleasant, for a cooling
breeze is constantly setting down the hatchways from the sails. What one
would rather be without, though, is that tropical tinting known as the
"prickly heat," which now begins to get troublesome; for, like boils,
its spots generally select those parts of the epidermis where they are
likely to become of the greatest nuisance, making the friction of
garments almost intolerable; but there, one can't have everything.

When the sails are trimmed with the same regularity day after day, with
never a tack nor sheet started, existence does not offer much of
variety, so that, like Columbus' sailors, we were glad to welcome even a
gale of wind. Now, a rolling and pitching ship is capital fun if you can
manage to stay the surgings of a revolutionary stomach; but it sometimes
happens that you can't, when, to vary a line in "In Memoriam," "you
heave responsive to the heaving deep." Then, too, we are as hungry as
"sea dogs." Ten or twelve days on sea rations are not to be envied,
especially as there is plenty of room for improvement in the dietary. It
is all very nice, nay, pleasant even, to feel hungry when there is a
prospect of a good "feed" in the tin dish; but how frequently do we find
a "southerly wind" prevailing in that receptacle for "panem;" and what
is there, I ask, in "Fanny Adams" alternated with "salt junk?" In the
one, nausea; in