I.]

SURVEYING INSTRUMENTS.

7

These consisted of a plane table, legs, and aledade, which packed into a knapsack case and weighed— as our shoulders knew to their cost-no less than 27 lbs. I had a lighter table made to fix on my camera stand which we often used instead; and sometimes we fixed the camera by a special screw on to the head of an ice-axe stuck firmly in the snow. I tried to attach the plane table in a similar manner, but the difficulty of levelling and steadying were too great to commend the plan. A prismatic compass, two aneroids, a set of thermometers and a hypsometer made up the list from the Royal Geographical Society.

Besides the above I took a six-inch sextant, which unfortunately came to an untimely end. Fifty sheets of paper cut to fit the plane table were packed in a tin case and an ample reserve stowed among my luggage. I sometimes used both sides of these sheets in this way. Having marked off the angles on one side I turned up the sheet, sketched the panorama, and numbered the peaks in view with figures corresponding to the bearings taken on the other side.

As the first thing necessary in anything of a trigonometrical survey is to be sure of a base line, and though I hoped that such a line might be found already provided by the line of railway, I brought a steel line 220 yards long (of a mile) accurately measured

before leaving home; this saved us much time in measuring.

Thanks to helping hands of kind friends, all the gear was ready and everything settled for us to leave Queenstown, for New York in the City of Rome on June 29th, 1888.

CHAPTER II.

"All things move Westward Ho . . . . It is bound up in the heart of man, that longing for the West."-KINGSLEY.

The City of Rome.-New York.-The Hudson.-Lake George.—

Ottawa.

ON Wednesday, June 28th, H. met me in Queenstown. We gave our goods to the agents of the Anchor Line Steamship Company, spent a last evening with our friends and next morning went on board the tender, which conveyed us outside the harbour where our big ship was at anchor waiting for her passengers.

For two days after leaving Queenstown we enjoyed splendid weather. On Saturday a freshening breeze and falling barometer warned us to look out for squalls. In the evening the wind shifted to the south-west; all sail was then taken in and Sunday dawned with a furious gale right in our teeth. The sea was rising fast, and though well used to the ocean in all its moods; to see it cleft asunder by this huge ship as she drove at the rate of fourteen knots an hour into the storm, to watch

her splitting the great seas and sending the spray flying like a continuous snowstorm from her bows, seemed to me one of the grandest sights I had ever beheld. For our ship was one

"That neither cared for wind, nor hail, nor rain

Nor swelling waves, but through them did pass,
So proudly that she made them roar again."

At 10 A.M. she made one terrible plunge. Everything passed out of sight in clouds of foam, and when her bows rose once more we saw that the look-out bridge had been smashed by the sea, and that the man in it lay on the floor crushed down beneath the iron rails. The engines were stopped to let the bo'sen's crew go forward to lower him to the deck, and he was taken to the surgery to have his wounds dressed. Immediately the screw resumed work and we drove on our headlong way into the storm. Two hours later another huge billow loomed up ahead. The engines were slowed. The great sea was split and flung aside.

This time, however, the spirit of the storm had his revenge; for as the big ship's bows rose out of the foam we saw the bowsprit tremble and then plunge into the sea on the port side. It had been snapped across close to the stem. The engines were promptly stopped, and when the ship's way through the water ceased, the officers and men went forward to see what could be done. The bowsprit was a hollow steel spar of about

II.]

THE FOURTH OF JULY AT SEA.

11

four feet in diameter, it was hanging deep in the water, and being connected with the stem by solid iron bobstays there was no way of getting rid of it. The only thing to be done was to hoist it on deck. This operation. took four hours, during which time we lay in the trough of the sea, with the full brunt of the storm on our broadside. Our ship, however, was marvellously steady; she did not roll much, but rose and fell with the greatest ease over the huge billows.

Next day we had steamed out of the cyclone, the summer sun shone out, and the afternoon was devoted to athletic sports on the promenade deck. The Fourth of July was duly celebrated by orations in the saloon, which was draped with flags in honour of the great day of American Independence.

On the evening of the 5th we were all on the look-out for land. The coast ought to have been visible, but a low-lying haze obscured it. Presently there loomed out of the fog an object like a rock rising above a strip of sandy beach, and an American friend standing near remarked, "That, sir, is the largest hotel in the world!" It certainly was a characteristic first glimpse of the country which every one knows "licks creation.” Rockaway Hotel contains about 1700 bedrooms, and "the biggest hotel in the world" has smashed every company that, up to the present, has undertaken to run it.

As the sun

was setting we threaded our way