Steam was in those days only just beginning to make itself felt in shipping out here. The P. & O. sent an infrequent ship, and a company had just crept into being which was endeavouring to institute a steam service from the Old Country with a few vessels of poor size and low power; but the dainty clippers ignored these grimy interlopers, looking down upon them as if with conscious pride in their own beauty from their splendid panoply of tophamper soaring into the skies. The Australasian coasting trade was beginning to be dominated by steamers which, however, in those days, were a collection of the quaintest freaks ever seen outside of a naval museum of antiquities. Yet such as they were they earned golden harvests for their owners in spite of their evil accommodation, their snail-like pace, and general unpunctuality. The food supplied was good and plentiful, if fairly rough in its preparation, and in any case the Colonial coasting passengers had not then learned to be fastidious. But these vessels used to sneak into Sydney and past the splendid host of sailing ships into their own out-of-the-way corner, as if ashamed of their ungainly hulls and their habit of befouling the bright air with the belching black clouds from their funnels--the result of burning native coal. They never dared to aspire to an honoured glance at the swagger curve of Circular Quay or Sydney Cove; that was reserved for sailing ships alone. It is a beautifully-shaped indentation in the shores of the harbour, the bow of which comes into what might be called the heart of the city. Its waters are deep and uniform; in fact, it is a natural dock of the most perfect type and in the most suitable place. But in those days its shores were sloping and unembanked, so that the ships were moored as close to as they could get, and long, massive stages connected them with the bank, for it was so sheltered that this primitive arrangement was quite undisturbed by weather.
That is all altered now. There is as great a change as from the _Dido_ and _Basilisk_, ancient men-of-war of the Australasian Squadron of those days to the _Powerful_ and _Challenger_ lying in Farm Cove adjacent, which we have just passed. The few sailing ships that are here now are anchored in out-of-the-way coves far from the city, and they look as if pitifully aware that they are only here on sufferance, that their day of pride and power has gone, never to return.