584 DILECTA

have neither masts, sails, nor decks, but are driven under water with their crews under hatches.

“DEAREST MR. RUSKIN,-I have just finished ‘The State of Denmark,’ which is delightful, especially the story of the row of expectant little pigs.¹ They are wonderful animals-our English elephant I think as to mental capacity. But they always have an interest to me above other edible live stock, in the way they make the best of life on shipboard; and when you can spare time to look at the enclosed little paper of mine, you will find that others have found their society cheerful.

“I have been reading all the old sea voyages I can get hold of lately, with a view to learn all I can about the way they handled their canvas in the days of sails (for my Sea-Wings),² and I come constantly across the pig on board ship in such books. For some reason or other, sailors don’t care to have parsons on board ship. This perhaps dates back to time of Jonah; and your passages in this Præterita, in which you describe and dispose of the teaching of some modern ones,³ are quite perfect, and in your ‘making short work’ best style.

“Ever yours affectionately,

“ROBT. C. LESLIE.”

20. “In smaller vessels, carrying no passengers, pigs and goats were seldom home-fed; but were turned loose to cater for themselves among the odds and ends in the waist or deck between the poop and forecastle. Some of the poultry, too, soon became tame enough to be allowed the run of this part of a ship; the ducks and geese finding a particular pleasure in paddling in the wash about the lee scuppers. Pigs have always proved a thriving stock on a ship-farm, and the one that pays the best. Some old skippers assert, indeed, that, like Madeira, pig is improved greatly by a voyage to India and back round the Cape; and that none but those who have tasted boiled leg of pork on board a homeward-bound Indiaman know much about the matter. But here also, as in so many other things, there was a drawback. Pigs are such cheerful creatures at sea that, as an old soft-hearted seaman once remarked, you get too partial towards them, and feel after dinner sometimes as though you had eaten an old messmate. Next to the pig the goat was the most useful stock on a seafarm. This animal soon makes itself at home on shipboard; it has good sea-legs, and is blessed with an appetite that nothing in the shape of vegetable fibre comes amiss to, from an armful of shavings from the carpenter’s berth to an old newspaper. Preserved milk was, of course, unknown in those times, and the officers of a large passenger-ship would rather have gone to sea without a doctor (to say nothing of a parson) than without a cow or some nanny-goats. Even on board a man-of-war the admiral or captain generally had at least one goat for his own use, while space was found for live stock for other ward-room officers. But

¹ [See above, p. 392.]

² [For this book, see Vol. XXXIII. p. 218 n.]

³ [See above, pp. 387, 388.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]