The Voyage alone in the Yawl Rob Roy. By John
Macgregor, M.A. (Low, Son, and Marston.)—The second cruise of the Rob Roy canoe was not equal in interest to the first. Mr. Macgregor has done well to com- mission a new craft before writing a third book. When once ho had familiarized his readers with the spectacle of a canoe making its way across Europe, there was scarcely any novelty in the change to Sweden and the Baltic. Now, however, we have a totally new excitement. The Rob Roy has grown* larger, but its dangers are magnified. Mr. Mac- gregor sails right across the Channel, once in its narrowest part, another time where it is broadest. This feat is performed in a sailing boat 21 feet long, of which Mr. Macgregor is at once captain and crew, in which he lived, cooked, and slept while moored off the Paris Exhibition, and with which he braved the furious gale of last August. He had his yawl towed up the Seine, coming once in collision with a bridge, but only proving the excellence of his mast. The only difficulty he met with seems to have been that certain papers had to be signed by two persons on board. Ha rather excited the wonder of a French policeman by dressing somewhat publicly at an early boar, and brushing his teeth over the Seine. Moreover, he got so accustomed to wearing a lifobelt that be paid a visit on shore in that costume. And on reaching Dover after the night of the August gale, he slept seventeen hours at a stretch while waiting for the servant to bring him his hot water. It is true that he had passed fifty-three boars without sleep, and that cruising alone exposed him to the unpleasant necessity of keeping all the three watches. But he generally took care to anchor at night, and the account he gives of his cruise is, in the main, a pleasant one. Boys like the story of the canoe voyage, he tells us, and it will be strange if they do not admit the yawl voyage to an equal share of their favour.
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