It was my first voyage on board a steamer, and though the tremulous motion and the stamping of the engine are anything but agreeable, I prefer it to the violent rolling and pitching of a sailing vessel.  We were certainly not nearly so much knocked about; the vases of flowers were taken off the mantel-piece, and placed upon the floor, but beyond this there were no precautions taken to prevent the movables from getting adrift; every thing remained quiet upon the tables, a circumstance which could not have happened in so heavy a sea in any vessel not steadied by the apparatus carried by a steamer.

The Phenix laboured heavily through the water; a torrent of rain soon cleared the deck of all the passengers, and the melancholy voices calling for the steward showed the miserable plight to which the male portion of the party was reduced.  Daylight appeared without giving hope of better weather; and it was not until the vessel had reached the pier at Havre, which it did not make until after three o’clock P.M. on Monday, that the passengers were able to re-assemble.  Many had not tasted food since their embarkation, and none had been able to take breakfast on the morning of their arrival.

And here, for the benefit of future travellers, it may not be amiss to say, that a small medicine-chest, which had been packed in a carpet-bag, was detained at the custom-house; and that the following day we experienced some difficulty in getting it passed, being told that it was contraband; indeed, but for an idea that the whole party were going on to Bombay, and would require the drugs for their own consumption, we should not have succeeded in rescuing it from the hands of the Philistines.  The day was too far advanced to admit of our getting the remainder of the baggage examined, a mischance which detained us a day at Havre, the steamer to Rouen starting at four o’clock in the morning.

The weather was too unpropitious to admit of our seeing much of the environs of the town.  Like all English travellers, we walked about as much as we could, peeped into the churches, made purchases of things we wanted and things we did not want, and got some of our gold converted into French money.  We met and greeted several of our fellow-passengers, for though little conversation, in consequence of the inclemency of the weather, had taken place on board the Phenix, we all seemed to congratulate each other upon our escape from the horrors of the voyage.

The gale increased rather than abated, and we now began to entertain fears of another day’s detention at Havre, the steamer from Rouen not having arrived; and though we were very comfortably lodged, and found the town superior to the expectations we had formed of a sea-port of no very great consideration, we had no desire to spend more time in it than we could help.