titude 20 deg. 43' N., longitude 47 deg. 40' W.
Yesterday knocked off two hundred and forty miles, averaging ten miles
per hour; best run yet; only about 2200 miles distant to-day; made two
hundred and twenty-four miles the last twenty-four hours.

_Sixth of June._--Twelve o'clock just reported, and latitude 15 deg. 14',
and have run two hundred and twenty-two miles since meridian yesterday;
making six hundred and eighty-six miles in three days, an average of
two hundred and twenty-eight and two third miles per diem. Have passed
the Windward Islands; are getting anxious now, and even if we do make
good runs, yet this practice of killing time by half hours (the bell is
struck every half hour), is becoming tedious, as we draw near home.

CHAPTER XXX.

Classic Ground--Hispaniola--Romance of the Western Waters
--Extracts from Diary--On a Wind--Newsboats wanted--The
Bermudas--Target practice.

We are now upon what might be called with poetical license, "classic
ground." Over these seas the small caravels of Columbus sought the land,
which had appeared to him in dreams, which we can now hardly look upon
as less than inspired. To-day, the eighth of June, we are in the
latitude of the south side of Cuba, along the shores of which he
coasted, mistaking them for Cipango, beyond which he was to reach the
magnificent country of Kathay, as described in the glowing pages of
Marco Polo, and Mandeville.

We have passed the parallel of the Isle of St. Domingo, his beloved and
heart-breaking Hispaniola. How blackened now its history, and how
inapposite its name! Obliquely we run past the Lucayan Isles, looking
out almost as anxiously as he did for the "promised land." But how
opposite our situations! We, with all the certain aids of science and
experience, steer for a well-known country; whilst he, thinking to make
the far distant land from which we now return, his own mind his chart,
his inspiration his guide, pointed his prow to uncertain ports in
unknown seas.

Talk of the Mediterranean, its Islands and its romance, why there is
more of the wonderful and romantic connected with the first voyages to
the western Archipelago, and the continent of America, than is comprised
in the history of the travel-stained Levant.

Would you have the story of the Argonauts, enlarged and improved, follow
the track of any of those Portuguese, Spanish, or even English
adventurers in search of gold, to these lands, and amongst these