Warburton, Eliot: Travels in Egypt and the Holy Land, or, The crescent and the cross: comprising the romance and realities of eastern travel (Philadelphia, 1859)

V

I

THE

CRESCENT AND THE CROSS

CHAPTER 1.

the outward bound.

And, oh ! when the glad waves foam around,

And the wind blows fair and free,
The health that we drank to the Outward-bound

Will come back to their memory.

Old friends will still seem near them,

In their ocean-cradled sleep ;
And that dreaming thought will cheer them,

Far away on the lonely deep.

Then fill, while the mid-watch passes,

Fill, the toast let it circle round,
From full hearts and brimming glasses,

And, hurrah ! for the Outward-bound !

Mrs. Norton.

We took leave of Old England and the Old Year together.
New Year's daylight found us standing on Southampton Pier,
in front of an avalanche of sun-gilt mist, through which a few
spires shot up, by way of signal that a town lay buried beneath
it. The Oriental steam-ship lay about a gun-shot from the
shore, sucking in a mingled mass of passengers and luggage
through a cavernous mouth in her cliff-like sides; boatload after
boatload was swallowed like mere spoonfuls, and it seemed mar-
vellous how even her aldermanic bulk could find " stomach for
them all." I had the Polyphemian boon of being devoured last,

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