On calling at the steamboat office in Liverpool, to take passage to Port Rush, we found that the fare in the fore cabin was but two shillings and a half, while in the chief cabin it was six times as much.  As I had started to make the tour of all Europe with a sum little higher than is sometimes given for the mere passage to and fro, there was no alternative—­the twenty-four hours’ discomfort could be more easily endured than the expense, and as I expected to encounter many hardships, it was best to make a beginning.  I had crossed the ocean with tolerable comfort for twenty-four dollars, and was determined to try whether England, where I had been told it was almost impossible to breathe without expense, might not also be seen by one of limited means.

The fore cabin was merely a bare room, with a bench along one side, which was occupied by half a dozen Irishmen in knee-breeches and heavy brogans.  As we passed out of the Clarence Dock at 10 P.M., I went below and managed to get a seat on one end of the bench, where I spent the night in sleepless misery.  The Irish bestowed themselves about the floor as they best could, for there was no light, and very soon the Morphean deepness of their breathing gave token of blissful unconsciousness.

The next morning was misty and rainy, but I preferred walking the deck and drying myself occasionally beside the chimney, to sitting in the dismal room below.  We passed the Isle of Man, and through the whole forenoon were tossed about very disagreeably in the North Channel.  In the afternoon we stopped at Larne, a little antiquated village, not far from Belfast, at the head of a crooked arm of the sea.  There is an old ivy-grown tower near, and high green mountains rise up around.  After leaving it, we had a beautiful panoramic view of the northern coast.  Many of the precipices are of the same formation as the Causeway; Fairhead, a promontory of this kind, is grand in the extreme.  The perpendicular face of fluted rock is about three hundred feet in height, and towering up sublimely from the water, seemed almost to overhang our heads.

My companion compared it to Niagara Falls petrified; and I think the simile very striking.  It is like a cataract falling in huge waves, in some places leaping out from a projecting rock, in others descending in an unbroken sheet.

We passed the Giant’s Causeway after dark, and about eleven o’clock reached the harbor of Port Rush, where, after stumbling up a strange old street, in the dark, we found a little inn, and soon forgot the Irish Coast and everything else.