dull reading for the most part, it kindles with enthusiasm when
eulogizing the Thermopylae and the Sir Launcelot, composite
clippers of wood and iron, afloat in 1870, which it declares to
be "the fastest sailing ships that ever traversed the ocean."
This fairly presents the issue which a true-blooded Yankee has no
right to evade. The greatest distance sailed by the Sir Launcelot
in twenty-four hours between China and London was 354 knots,
compared with the 424 miles of the Sovereign of the Seas and the
436 miles of the Lightning. Her best sustained run was one of
seven days for an average of a trifle more than 300 miles a day.
Against this is to be recorded the performance of the Sovereign
of the Seas, 3562 miles in eleven days, at the rate of 324 miles
every twenty-four hours, and her wonderful four-day run of 1478
miles, an average of 378 miles.

The Thermopylae achieved her reputation in a passage of
sixty-three days from London to Melbourne--a record which was
never beaten. Her fastest day's sailing was 330 miles, or not
quite sixteen knots an hour. In six days she traversed 1748
miles, an average of 291 miles a day. In this Australian trade
the American clippers made little effort to compete. Those
engaged in it were mostly built for English owners and sailed by
British skippers, who could not reasonably be expected to get the
most out of these loftily sparred Yankee ships, which were much
larger than their own vessels of the same type. The Lightning
showed what she could do from Melbourne to Liverpool by making
the passage in sixty-three' days, with 3722 miles in ten
consecutive days and one day's sprint of 412 miles.

In the China tea trade the Thermopylae drove home from Foo-chow