The likeness of this idea occurs in the following weak, cold, wire-drawn passage of Falconer's "Shipwreck ;" but the condensation, the application, the moral, are all Lord Byron's! But while his heart the fatal jav'lin thrills, And flitting life escapes in sanguine rills, What radiant changes strike the astonish'd sight,

What glowing hues of mingled shade and light;

Not equal glories gild the lucid west,
With parting beams all o'er profusely drest.

These sights consoled us for the loss of land this day, and on the next the new world was again in view. On the following morning (21st Nov.) we were brought in sight of the harbour of Rio de Janeiro, and came to anchor there in the evening. It was under a glowing sunset, with a light fair breeze, that we glided into this sublime and beautiful harbour. The hilly points of land, past which we sailed, were covered with (to us) exotic vegetation, and the wooded mountains of the distance were obviously un-European. It was like sailing in a ship of heaven into a new planet. It comes not within my plan to copy full, true, and particular accounts from histories, or voyages and travels; suffice it to say, that on the following morning I went on shore for nearly a fortnight, during which time I saw enough of America to appreciate its grandeur and fertility, and of the Portuguese to estimate their pettiness and barbarity. I made one considerable excursion into the interior, namely, to the waterfalls of Tejeuca, distant three leagues. The party was made by my friend, the

Chevalier Langsdorff, the Russian Consul General. The whole road lay along narrow passes, round romantic mountains, in many parts very steep and precipitous. Magnificent aloes, and warm orange-trees with their fruit,

Like golden lamps in a green night,

grew spontaneously; and frequent streams refreshed, and cascades illustrated the landscape. We took dinner under the second waterfall. our breakfast under the first, and our The first meal was made before the cottage of two intelligent Frenchmen, who had commenced a coffee plantation here. The scenery and properties made me fancy myself on the stage of a theatre. A French in the neighbourhood, came walking nobleman, who is building a house down the passes of the waterfall to join our party, it was

much like the back scene of a play, A melo-drame, which people flock to see, When the first act is ended by a dance, In vineyards copied from the south of France.

We could see him zig-zag towards us ten minutes before he arrived-I had nearly said, came on the stage. Our outward journey was performed under 85 degrees of heat in the shade, which seemed to be enjoyed by the monkey, the snake, the parrot, and the humming-bird; but our homeward took place under a cool moonlight, and was attended by the sparkling of fire-flies, and the singing of crickets.

On the morning of the 4th December we quitted the English hospitality, Portuguese music, and tropical heat of Rio, and returned on board of ship. The next morning, at daylight, we got under weigh, and were towed out of this beautiful harbour; in the evening we lost sight of Cape Frio. The following morning, early, we crossed the tropic of Capricorn, and proceeded on our course to Australasia, with a fair wind. We now came into the principality of Whales, and were almost constantly attended by albatrosses and petrels. In the evening a calm, which we attributed to our propinquity to the island of Tristan d'Acunha, although the rain prevented us from seeing it, brought no less than eight albatrosses to swim

and feed at our stern.* They bit the bait, but avoided the hook, of lines that were thrown towards them; but on the 2d January, 1817, the crew were fortunate enough to catch nine One large ones by similar means. measured ten feet from wing to wing's extremity. On this day we doubled the Cape of Good Hope. We were now visited by what the sailors call the Cape Pigeon. It is the small blue pintado bird mentioned by Mr. Anderson, in his observations on Christmas island, in Cook's Voyages. That great circumnavigator himself, in his second voyage, also describes "the brown and white pintado,

which we named Antarctic Petrel." It is, undoubtedly, of the petrel tribe, and is in every respect shaped like the pintado, differing from it only in colour. The head and fore part of the body of this are brown; and the hind part of the body, tail, and the ends of the wings are white. In the Edinburgh Natural History the only pintado is called the Procellaria Capensis, from the Cape of Good Hope, and is described as "white with brown spots," from no later an authority than Dampier's Voyages.

On the 8th January we saw a strange sail, being the only vessel, except one whaler, we had seen since we left Rio de Janeiro. If my meagre narrative has made so much of birds and fishes, how much more interesting is the sight of a ship full of human creatures, especially in a latitude where

-Ships are rare, From time to time, like pilgrims, here and

there

Crossing the waters.

The next morn

sail.

On the 9th we saw the smaller

gull, which I took to be Capt. Cook's chocolate-coloured albatross; and on the 11th I counted no less than twenty albatrosses about us. On the next day an innumerable shoal of fish, which the sailors call black-fish, were rolling along with the ship, like porpoises. I could not find it described in the Edinburgh Elements of Natural History, and was at a loss whe◄ ther to call it a whale, a physeter, or a dolphin. From its size and bottle nose I take it to be the balena rostrata: but then some of the crew, who had been whalers, said it produced spermaceti, as the physeter only does; and its motion more resembled that of a porpoise (delphinus). It was quite black; except that it had a grey patch on the back; it had one fistula at the back of the head, and an adipose fin on the back; it was about fifteen feet long.

On the 15th a phorphorescent sea and Portuguese men of war betrayed a warmer latitude; and at daybreak on the 17th the coast of Australia

shore, and continued coasting all day with a fair breeze. The land exactly accords with Captain Cook's description. "The sea-shore was a white sand, but the country within was green and woody." We again saw columns of smoke. In the forenoon, we passed the Ram-Head, and in the afternoon doubled Cape Howe. On the rocks we saw many seals. In the evening we passed the Green Cape, so called from the turf upon it. The country is thus accurately described by Captain Cook; "it is of a moderate height, diversified by hill and valley, ridge and plain, interspersed with a few lawns of no great extent, but in general covered with wood: the ascent of the hills and ridges is gentle, and the summits are not high."-First Voyage.

The next morning found us off higher hills, and a long table mountain. We saw several fires on the Coast. At noon we passed Mount Dromedary, off which lies Montague Island. The land was more distant to-day, and showed ranges of higher hills, one behind the other, like the waves of the sea. We passed Bateman's Bay, and Point Upright; and in the evening brought in sight the peaked hill, which Capt. Cook likened to, and called the Pigeon House.

Early the next morning we doubled Cape St. George. The land was still distant; but we saw Flat Hill. In the evening, having run our distance by the log, we lay to all night off Botany Bay; and at day-light of the 24th of February made sail for Port Jackson, and anchored in Sydney Cove in good time in the morning; and thus ends the narrative of a voyage of 152 days at sea, during which we travelled 15,335 miles by the log.

Thus have I extracted all the honey of my voyage for the reader: the sting remains with me. I am not ungrateful enough to forget the beau tiful sunsets of the first half of the voyage; nor the frequent reliefs to the eye which the sight of islands afforded; but no landsman can form an idea of a three weeks' calm near the line; and if the first half of the voyage was too hot, the second was too cold and cloudy; so that we had

no sunset or moonlight scenes at all; and then we saw not any land for seventy-three days, nor any ship for forty-four. Thus deserted, the albatross,

The bird that loved the man, took pity on us; and from Rio de Janeiro we were hardly ever without him; we were also visited by sea hens and Cape pigeons; and, during the whole voyage, I do not think I missed my favorite little petrel for a week together.

with sight of "nothing lovely but Having passed so many months the sea and sky," it might be expected that I should not close my narrative without some observation or reflection upon the kindred immensities. But I have little to add to the facts above recorded, from which it will be abundantly seen how interesting is bird, and therefore it will be prethe sight of the smallest fish and sumed, (and the presumption will be of the truth,)

How like a load on the weary eye, Lie the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky.

As the profound author of this quotation has anticipated my next feeling on board ship, I had better have recourse to his words:

I observed a wild duck swimming on the waves a single solitary wild duck. It is it looked in that round, objectless desart of not easy to conceive how interesting a thing waters. I had associated such a feeling of immensity with the ocean, that I felt exceedingly disappointed, when I was out of sight of all land, at the narrowness and nearness (as it were) of the circle of the horizon. So little are images capable of satisfying the obscure feelings connected with

words!

The "flat sea," (as Milton calls it) can be seen only for five or six miles round; but when a headland is in view (and the peak of Teneriffe may be seen 180 miles off') the ideas of vastness and distance are restored. I have only one or two other remarks. The panorama of an ordinary sea is mere sameness; but when there is a heavy swell, and the wind blows, it is sport to see the head of a huge wave, as it rises into

the wind's sweep, dashed off into atoms like dust, and converted into foam. On ordinary occasions, the only amusement of sailing is to look over the ship's quarter, and watch the recurrent foam that follows the stern, in sight and sound exactly like a waterfall. As the sea settles after each dash, the froth veins and clouds the dark water, and gives it the precise resemblance of marble, whence the epithet in Virgil is peculiarly happy.

Et quæ marmoreo fert monstra sub æquore

pontus.

A beautiful effect is produced by the sun's shining through the spray at the ship's side; a perfect rainbow is seen in the dark sea, on the other side of the spray, and may be fancied some fathoms deep.

An Iris sits amid th' infernal surge
Like Hope upon a death-bed, and, unworn
Its steady dies, while all around is torn
By the distracted waters, bears serene
Its brilliant hues with all their beams un-
shorn :

Resembling 'mid the torture of the scene,
Love watching Madness with unalterable

mien.

And now I have exhausted all the pleasures of ship-board-which (to my thinking) are few indeed, and small, compared with its many and great pains. Some allowance must certainly be made in weighing this opinion, for the wearisome length of this voyage broken only by one landing, performed in a heavy uneasy ship, and ushered in by a storm in the channel. But when all this is done, a cabin is a small room that serves for parlour and bed room, and kitchen and store room, never secure from pitching and rolling at an angle of forty-five degrees from nature's level each way; so that I cannot think that even a pennyless disabled sailor would live twelve months in a house on shore, which should be subject to the same motion-no, not if he were paid a hundred pounds for it, and had a sick wife and large fa

mily. He that would go to sea had need have neither ears nor nose; for booms and bulk heads will creak, and provisions will emit their odour. Were a man, like the king of the black isles in the Arabian Nights, marble from the girdle downwards, he might with impunity go to sea as a passenger; but he who has the misfortune to have a stomach and legs unused to balance his body on moving boards, had better stay on terra firma.

but only in retrospection and anticiA sailor does not live in præsenti, was I this time last year?" and pation: his conversation is, "Where

"How soon shall we reach such a

place?" The bachelor critic in Gil Blas maintained that the wind was the most interesting circumstance in the tragedy of Iphigenia; but I am sure it is the only important topic of conversation on board of ship.

Man was never meant to cross an ocean; and as Sir Philip Sidney well says of a ship, "That dwelling place is unnatural to mankind; and then the terribleness of the continual motion, the desolation of the farbeing from comfort, the eye and the ear having ugly images ever before it, doth still vex the mind, even when it is best armed against it."

To conclude, the greatest pleasure of a voyage is the end of it; and I may venture to assert, that the cry of "Land!" was never yet heard without joy, even by one of so roving a spirit that he would go to sea again the next day.

Even such a one does not love the sea for itself, but only as the vehicle of seeing various countries; and truly, the sight of a foreign land or town is for the first twenty-four hours enchanting, though a great part of the pleasure must be set down to the account of getting from ship-board on dry ground. But no sight can be cheaply purchased by even a month's restless imprisonment at sea; and when all lands are seen, none is like home! B. F.