The Cruise of the Elena by James Ewing Ritchie

I shall never forget my first view of the Clyde from the heights above Greenock. It is true I had seen the Clyde before, but it was at Glasgow years ago, and it had left on my mind but a poor impression of its extent, or utility, or grandeur. What a sight you have of dockyards, where thousands of men are ship-building! and what a fleet of vessels laden with the produce of every country under heaven! As I take up a Scotch paper, I read: -- "The cargoes imported during the month included 64 of grain, &c., 65 of sugar, 22 of timber, 5 of wine, 2 of fruits, 1 of brandy, 1 of ice, 3 of esparto grass and iron ore, 3 of rosin, 2 of oil, 1 of tar, 1 of guano, 1 of nitrate of soda, and 4 with minerals. " And then how grand is the prospect beyond -- of distant watering-places, crammed during the summer season, not alone with Glasgow and Edinburgh citizens, but with English tourists, who find in these picturesque spots a charm they can discover nowhere else. Almost all the way -- at any rate, since I left Leeds -- I have had my carriage almost entirely to myself; and now I am in a crowd greater and busier than of Cheapside at noon, with knapsacks and carpet-bags and umbrellas, all bent on seeing those beauties of Nature of which Scotland may well be proud.

To leave the train and hurry down the pier, and rush on board the _Iona_, is the work of a minute, but of a minute rich in marvels. The _Iona_ is a fine saloon steamer, which waits for the train at Greenock, and thence careers along the Western Coast, leaving her passengers at various ports, and picking up others till some place or other, with a name which I can hardly pronounce, and certainly cannot spell, is reached. It must carry some fourteen or fifteen hundred people. I should think we had quite that number on board -- people like myself, who had been travelling all night -- people who had joined us at such places as Leicester, or Leeds, or Carlisle -- people who had come all the way in her from Glasgow -- people who had come on business -- people who were bent on pleasure -- people who had never visited the Highlands before -- people who are as familiar with them as I am with Cheapside or the Strand -- people with every variety of costume, of both sexes and of all ages -- people who differed on all subjects, but who agreed in this one faith, that to breakfast on board the _Iona_ is one of the first duties of man, and one of the noblest of woman's rights. Oh, that breakfast! To do it justice requires an abler pen than mine. Never did I part with a florin -- the sum charged for breakfast -- with greater pleasure. We all know breakfasts are one of those things they manage well in Scotland, and the breakfast on board the _Iona_ is the latest and most triumphant vindication of the fact.