from the under-world; the wash of waters upon coral-reefs; the shadow of
green palms upon lonely isles; strange sea-weeds floating on the deep
green wave, and flying-fish hunted by voracious foes; long days and
nights spent under glowing skies, without a glimpse of land; the
breathless eagerness with which some new shore is sighted--with such
incidents as these we English are necessarily familiar, possessing as we
do a vast and various literature of the sea. And yet our appetite never
grows weary of the old, old tale; there is a romance about it which
never seems to fade--like the sea itself it seems ever to present some
fresh and novel aspect.

And such an aspect it certainly wears when it is told by a woman, as it
has been told by Lady Brassey, one of the most adventurous and agreeable
of lady-voyagers. Told, too, with a literary skill and a refined taste
which have greatly charmed the public, and given a permanent value to
her rapid record. There is no affectation of high-wrought adventure or
heroic enterprise about it. Lady Brassey describes only what she has
seen--and she saw a great deal. She invents nothing and she magnifies
nothing; her narrative is as plain and unvarnished as a ship's log-book.

The yacht _Sunbeam_ in which Lady (she was then simply Mrs.) Brassey
accomplished her voyage round the world was a screw three-masted
schooner, of 530 tons, with engines of thirty-five horse-power, and a
speed of 10 to 13 knots an hour. She was 157 feet in length, with an
extreme breadth of twenty-seven and a-half feet. Belonging to a wealthy
English gentleman, she was richly appointed, and fitted up with a
luxurious splendour which would have driven wild with envy and
admiration the earlier circumnavigators. Leaving Chatham on the 1st of
July, 1876, she ran off Beachy Head on the following evening, dropped
anchor off Cowes next morning, and early on the 6th passed through the
Needles.

"We were forty-three on board, all told," says Mrs. Brassey, the party
then including her husband and herself and their four children, some
friends, a sailing master, boatswain, carpenter, able-bodied seamen,
engineers, firemen, stewards, cooks, nurse, stewardess, and lady's maid.

On the 8th they were fairly away from Old England. Next day, in the
afternoon, they rounded Ushant, at the distance of a mile and a-half:
"the sea was tremendous, the waves breaking in columns of spray against
the sharp needle-like rocks that form the poin