ders;
others, outward-bound, come here to receive some of their passengers.
Very frequently, when intending to run through the Needle passage, they
wait here for a fair wind, so that the Roads are seldom without a number
of ships, besides the yachts, whose owners have their headquarters here,
many of their families living on shore.

We agreed, however, that we were better off on board our tight little
yacht, able to get under weigh and to go anywhere without having to wait
for our friends on shore.

Leaving Cowes harbour on our port quarter, we stood for Leep Buoy, off
the mouth of the Beaulieu River. Hence we steered for the village of
Leep, on the mainland. Truck knowing the river well, we ran on until we
came to an anchor off the village of Exbury. Here it was thought safer
to bring up, and proceed the rest of the distance in the boat. The
river above Exbury becomes very narrow, and we might have got becalmed,
or, what would have been worse, we might have stuck on the mud.

We pulled up for some miles between thickly-wooded banks,--indeed, we
were now passing through a part of the New Forest. Suddenly the river
took a bend, and we found ourselves off a village called Buckler's Hard.
The river here expands considerably, and we saw two or three vessels at
anchor. In the last great war there was a dockyard here, where a number
of frigates and other small men-of-war were built from the wood which
the neighbouring forest produced. Now, the dockyard turns out only a
few coasting craft. How different must have been the place when the
sound of the shipwright's hammer was incessantly heard, to what it now
is, resting in the most perfect tranquillity, as if everybody in the
neighbourhood had gone to sleep! No one was to be seen moving on shore,
no one even on board the little coasters. Not a bird disturbed the calm
surface of the river.

As it was important that we should be away again before the tide fell we
pulled on, that we might land close to Beaulieu itself. The scenery was
picturesque in the extreme, the trees in many places coming down to the
water's edge, into which they dipped their long hanging boughs. About
six miles off, the artist Gilpin had the living of Boldre, and here he
often came to sketch views of woodland and river scenery. We landed
near the bridge, and walked on to see Beaulieu Abbey. Passing through a
gateway we observed the massive walls, which exist here and there almost
entire, in