Several produced lunch and bottles, and refreshed themselves
very soon after we started. By and by the wind became so disagreeable
that I went below, and sat in the cabin, only occasionally looking out,
to get a peep at the shores of the river, which I had never before seen
above Eastham. However, they are not worth looking at; level and
monotonous, without trees or beauty of any kind,--here and there a
village, and a modern church, on the low ridge behind; perhaps, a
windmill, which the gusty day had set busily to work. The river
continues very wide--no river indeed, but an estuary--during almost the
whole distance to Runcorn; and nearly at the end of our voyage we
approached some abrupt and prominent hills, which, many a time, I have
seen on my passages to Rock Ferry, looking blue and dim, and serving for
prophets of the weather; for when they can be distinctly seen adown the
river, it is a token of coming rain. We met many vessels, and passed
many which were beating up against the wind, and which keeled over, so
that their decks must have dipped,--schooners and vessels that come from
the Bridgewater Canal. We shipped a sea ourselves, which gave the
fore-deck passengers a wetting.
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