A Memphian's Trip to Europe with Cook's Educational Party; To Which Is Added Letters from Revs. T. W. Hooper, A. B. Whipple, and C. W. Cushing Also, Letters from Several Ladies and Gentlemen of the Party (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. Letters from the Rev. A. B. Whipple, President of Lansing- burgh College, New York. On The Steamer Victoria, Saturday, June 28, 1873. A Week to-day we saw an acre?more or less?of kerchiefs waving us a kind adieu as, without parade or cannonade, we quietly glided away from pier No. 20 down the harbor, leaving New York and its thousand spires to sink behind the receding waters. A good dinner at 2 o'clock lessened the pangs of hunger and the pangs of parting, and prepared us to part with our pilot off Sandy Hook Light, some twenty- two miles from the city. The day was very fair, and so were the following days, till Friday afternoon. A storm came on, which is still continuing to keep most of the passengers below, penning, as I am, to "friends in America." Every moment, thus far, has been one of pleasure, and now, twenty-five hundred miles on my way, I, with most of the others, can say the God of the Sea has dealt kindly with us, and not turned our stomachs into heaving notions. To describe an ever-changing sea ? its grand sunset and sunrise scenery ? its changing, real and reflected, colors, in all their marine varieties ? the myriad sea-fowl that swim or skim its surface?the schools of whale, porpoise, and grampus, that seem to be having a short recess, and sporting near us for our observation? the beautiful sail-spread nautili as they, catching thesunset glow, sail by us toward the sunset?the passing ships that greet us kindly with national flag? the ocean steamers that ere this have reported us? the northern lights that make our northern sky aglow with dancing twilight?or the little ripples that simply ruffle the surface?or the mighty waves that just now dash against the cabin-light, and break in, striking on the deck above my head?to describe all this, I s...