At this moment Cowes contains half the world; and every villa, and assembly-room, and tavern, and pot-house, from the superb club-house, with its metamorphosed lords, to the Sun tap, with its boisterous barge-men, are as happy as mortals can be.

I went up the steps on the Galata side before one comes to where the barge-bridge was.

Large raft-like barges convey this grain down the rivers, from the interior of the country to the seaports.

As we float away through the watery streets, old Shylock shuffles across the bridge,black barges glide by us in the silent canals,groups of unfamiliar faces lean from the balconies,and we hear the plashing waters lap the crumbling walls of Venice, with its dead Doges and decaying palaces.

One black night Moussa Isa sat on the stern of his barge holding to a rope beneath the high wall of the side of the P. & O. liner, Persia, in shadow and darkness undispelled by the flickering flare of a brazier of burning fuel, designed to illuminate the path of panting, sweating, coal-laden coolies up and down narrow bending planks, laid from the lighter to the gloomy hole in the ship's side.

I found two odd sections in the last barge-load.

150 The ship at anchor, like a fixed rock, Breaks the proud billows which her large sides knock; Whose rage restrainèd, foaming higher swells, And from her port the weary barge repels, Threat'ning to make her, forcèd out again, Repeat the dangers of the troubled main.

" After Minchampstead, the rail leaves the sands and clays, and turns up between the chalk hills, along the barge river which it has rendered useless, save as a supernumerary trout-stream; and then along Whit, now flowing clearer and clearer, as we approach its springs amid the lofty clowns.

We traversed the town from end to end and studied the barge-boards and punkin-ends of every old house.

I was busy with a barge wot happened to be handy at the time, but I 'eard her say that she would take it and give it to 'im.