and fifty pounds a year, if you keep a yacht,
is always a fair salary to give an experienced
captain; otherwise, from ten pounds to fifteen
pounds a month. A small useful yacht,
indeed, may be maintained altogether, and in
very good style, for five or six hundred a year,
everything included. A still smaller one,
only intended for trips on the coast, need not
cost more than two hundred. Fitting up
yachts, however, is fearfully expensive, and
so is a good stock of provisions. It is better
to do these things by contract: hiring the
vessel, hiring everything in it, and contracting
even for provisions, giving back what may
be brought home. For one trip, this is, of
course, by far the cheapest way, but it would
never do for a man who keeps a yacht always.
Beware of forts and batteries, and take care
always to answer immediately to any signals
that are made to you. Remember, a gun-shot
will reach a long way, and a refractory little
schooner is sometimes brought, rather roughly,
to order and obedience.

Yacht travellers are, generally, very well
received wherever they go; and, as they are
looked upon as bringing their certificate of
respectability with them—especially if belonging
to a club—they usually receive every
attention, and are admitted at once into the
society of any place where they may stop.
This is a very pleasant thing, which yachting
folks should be careful not to abuse.

After all, I look upon a yacht now-a-days
very much in the light of a travelling
carriage; and unless a man is very, very rich,
or a very determined and enthusiastic sailor,
it is, with all its advantages, often a troublesome
and an expensive encumbrance. It is
such a slow mode of travelling, too; and is
so uncertain, that many a man who has gone
gaily out to Lisbon to find important letters
recalling him home, has been glad enough to
leave his yacht to take care of itself, and get
back to England in a fourth of the time by a
steamer. Indeed, you may easily have most
of the advantages of a yacht, without any of
the bother of it: you and your party taking
in good time the best cabins of a steamer,
and as you will find it generally stops at all
places of interest, you may stop where you
like, and either wait till the next of the line
of packets makes its appearance, vary your
journey by a little land travelling, or charter
a boat to the next point where steamers are
more frequent. Depend upon one thing;
there is nothing like being independent as
much as possible, and you will soon get
heartily sick of any means of travelling you
are absolutely tied to.

Neither must you expect much real amusement
from your first trip on the water. You
will, of course, be sea-sick, and I have known
sea-sickness to last a whole voyage, even for
months; indeed, some people are never cured
of it, and the oldest sailors suffer sometimes
I have seen the captain of a man-of-war
obliged to rise from table by a sudden qualm.
Remedies and quacking are of no use. For
a short voyage, however, say from Boulogne
to Folkstone, I believe there is a remedy,
at least it is one I always find effectual,
and neither more or less than a beefsteak
and a wineglass full (no more) of cold
brandy-and-water. Fish, wine, beer, sweets,
made dishes, tea, coffee, and the rest of it,
are all nearly certain to be troublesome.
People have a silly idea that sea-sickness does
them good; but I fancy this is a great mistake,
and I have known many people seriously ill
for a fortnight afterwards, one break a blood-
vessel, and one who died from it. Among the
three things that the Roman philosopher
regretted was that of having once made a
voyage by sea when he might have gone by
land, and in the famous Spanish ballad about
the landing of Tarik, who overthrew the
Empire of Roderick, in Spain, the Moslem is
made to say—

     " Since man is made of dust, I ween,
        He well may dread the sea,"

and this of a mere afternoon's sail across the
Straits of Gibraltar.

Chartering a boat in the Mediterranean is
a very grave affair; and such a vast variety of
rogueries are practised in the proceeding that
the best way is to draw up a written agreement,
even if you are only going a twenty-four
hours' run. A very favourite manoeuvre
of the Cadiz boatmen is, or used to be,
taking their fare to the wrong place, and
then insisting upon some rascally payment
to go on where he wanted them. Take
care always, too, to carry rather more
than a sufficient supply of provisions for any
voyage you contemplate making in a felucca
or mistico; for if a breeze spring up strong
enough to ruftte a duck-pond, the master will,
likely enough, run you into some out-of-the-
way creek, while he crosses himself at leisure.
Get him out of it if you can, while there is
anything stronger than a zephyr blowing, or
one sparkle of foam on the crest of a wave.
Now, as the Spanish and Portuguese sailors
live chiefly on powerful onions, washed down
with the most abominable wine in a state of
fermentation, you will find a couple of cold
chickens and a glass of Val de peñas very
useful. For the rest a close-fitting oilskin cap,
and an India rubber mattrass filled with wind,
and a Portsmouth sailor's tarpauling boots and
great coat, are the best things possible to sleep
in, if you can get them—as you sometimes can
at Lisbon or Cadiz—as the whole boat is sure
to swarm with vermin.

One of the pleasantest things I know of is
a cruise in a man-of-war, and the properest
thing to do after messing with the officers, is
to send in a case or two of Champagne to the
mess when you make your bow to them. A
well-appointed man-of-war, with a captain,
popular among his crew, is the paradise of
the waters; its perfect and scrupulous
cleanliness, the good order that reigns always;