Captain Boyton did not succeed last Saturday in paddling 'himself
across the Channel, but it was not for want of either pluck or strength, for it was calculated that he paddled him- *elf at least forty miles, though, owing to the drift of the currents, he had not even then reached the French coast. However, though he and the steamer which accompanied him did not know it, he was only four miles from the coast, when towards evening, after fifteen hours in the water, he was persuaded to give up the attempt and get into the steamer. Two hours more would certainly have brought him to shore. It is clear enough that if he had attempted, as he wanted, to paddle back 200 miles in the Atlantic to the United States' shore, he could not have met so extravagant a draft on his powers, and would have perished. Still, what he has accomplished is wonderful enough, and the surgeon who was near him in the Channel enterprise, and who reports on his case for the Lancet, says that he could have borne easily a much greater fatigue, and that the paddling does not weary him half as much as would be supposed, the only fatigue being in the wrist. After he was asleep in bed at Boulogne, he was observed to paddle a little in his dreams, but there was no sign of exhaustion, and the next morning he was out early smoking his cigar.
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