All afternoon we steamed along the coast of Ireland, with grey cliffs
guarding the shores, and hills rising behind gaunt and barren; as dusk
fell, the coast rounded away from us to the northwest, and the last we
saw of Europe was the Irish mountains dim and faint in the dropping
darkness. With the thought that we had seen the last of land until we
set foot on the shores of America, I retired to the library to write
letters, little knowing that many things would happen to us all--many
experiences, sudden, vivid and impressive to be encountered, many
perils to be faced, many good and true people for whom we should have
to mourn--before we saw land again.

There is very little to relate from the time of leaving Queenstown on
Thursday to Sunday morning. The sea was calm,--so calm, indeed,
that very few were absent from meals: the wind westerly and
southwesterly,--"fresh" as the daily chart described it,--but often
rather cold, generally too cold to sit out on deck to read or write,
so that many of us spent a good part of the time in the library,
reading and writing. I wrote a large number of letters and posted them
day by day in the box outside the library door: possibly they are
there yet.

Each morning the sun rose behind us in a sky of circular clouds,
stretching round the horizon in long, narrow streaks and rising tier
upon tier above the sky-line, red and pink and fading from pink to
white, as the sun rose higher in the sky. It was a beautiful sight to
one who had not crossed the ocean before (or indeed been out of sight
of the shores of England) to stand on the top deck and watch the swell
of the sea extending outwards from the ship in an unbroken circle
until it met the sky-line with its hint of infinity: behind, the wake
of the vessel white with foam where, fancy suggested, the propeller