do to clear the decks of it, and put back again to Baltimore with the loss of their bowsprit.

It was now cold again, with piercing airs from Greenland, and a few days more brought us into the longitude of the Azores, or Western Islands; when the mate, whose attention was unremitted, and his judgment infallible, told us we should have rough weather, and that many a good ship had lost her masts there.

We had yet had scarcely time to make ourselves uneasy about French cruizers, though before we left home, we had thought it prudent to provide ourselves with letters for general Toussaint, in case of being carried into St. Domingo, and we now began to think ourselves out of danger.

On the very day we reckoned ourselves in the middle of the ocean, uncertain whether nearest to Europe or America, the wind freshened to as heavy a gale as the former. This, however, was fair; but, by the time the ship was got under reefed topsails, in ordering which the captain, who has naturally the voice of a stentor, was obliged to use a speaking trumpet, night closed in upon us; our dead lights were again put in with considerable difficulty, and the vessel began to jirk and pitch amazingly. Every now and then a wave overtaking us with redoubled roar would seem for a moment, by the tremulous and sinking motion of the ship, as if it was striving to engulf us; and then, after an awful interval, breaking furiously over the stern, would rush over our heads like a clap of thunder.

Amid all these horrors, it often cheered us to hear the mate cry out in the pride of his heart, at our making eight or ten knots an hour, "A fine breeze! a fine breeze for the owners." But if any body came down, (and one fellow-passenger often did with apparent design) to tell us how high the sea ran; how it broke over our bows, as high as the fore-top; how hard it blew, and that it would blow harder; our spirits sunk within us, and we could only dissipate the melancholy gloom in reading the Psalms of David, which have such frequent reference to the waves of the sea, for examples of danger, fluctuation, and dependance upon God, as to suit the situation of persons at sea, as if they had been com posed on purpose.

The one hundred and seventh psalm, in particular, seemed to us a kind of promise, because it had occurred undesignedly, the first time we took up a bible on board.

*They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters: These see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep. For he commandeth and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves thereof. They mount up to the Heaven, they go down again to the depths, their soul is melted because of trouble. They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wits end. Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and he bringeth them out of their distresses. He maketh a storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still. Then are they glad because they be quiet; so he bringeth them unto their desired haven."

From this time, till we had soundings in the British channel, the weather was such that we could sleep but little, in broken slumbers, and rarely ate our meals with any relish.

When I ventured to look out upon the raging sea, which now seemed as if it would toss us into the air, now swallow us up, in an opening gulf, I found my confidence greatly increased, by observing how wonderfully a light ship will reel, and twist, and dash, and dive, and yet mount again, ride the roaring waves, bound over the boisterous element, and live through all. Nothing can be imagined more dismal than an approaching tempest, coming on just as the shades of night begin to thicken around you,

"And swell the boding terrors of the storm,"

while you see yourself committed, as it were, to the mercy of the great deep, terrified with ideas of the possibility of splitting in an instant upon sunken rocks, or the more probable shock of vessels steering athwart your cou se, when one or the other, sometimes both, go down at once into a watery grave. But let the storm be never so furious, the long wished-for day relieves, even when it cannot remove your fears; and enlivens, with a gleam of hope, the most disastrous situation.

Once the sea broke into the fore-top, and rolled so deep over the main deck, as to hide the men in the forecastle from those on * Psalm cvii. 23-30..

the quarter. This attracted our curiosity, and we must needs stand in the door-way looking at the raging billows, till a surge Icapt over the gunnel, and soused us all over from head to foot.

We were often obliged to take our dinner in our hands, and sometimes my B- was fain to set down upon an old great coat, spread over the wet floor, to make tea, and send it round to the births in tin cups; the steward on one side to hold the kettle, which was often overset two or three times before it could be made to boil, and the cabin boy on the other, to save the tins from rolling away.

She was panic struck, whenever I attempted to move, as my weight frequently drove me headlong from one side of the cabin to the other. Once three or four of us were tossed several times backward and forward on the cabin floor, before we were able to recover ourselves.

We reconciled ourselves however to every thing, short of imminent danger, with the idea of making two hundred and fifty miles in twenty-four hours.-No idle work for a body of three hundred tons.

The first indication we had of approaching land was from a brace of ducks, that had been blown off the coast by a strong north-easter, the swell of which we met after the wind was spent.

Next day we fell in with a small fleet of Newfoundlandmen, beating up against the wind, one of which we spoke, with difficulty, the sca running very high, out six days from Poole, a seaport half way up the channel.

These were the only ships we had seen since leaving the American coast, and as they tossed by us on the roaring waves, we felt our hearts glow at the unusual sight of new faces, with a sensation that proved to us what moralists so often fruitlessly inculcate, that all mankind are of one family.

A day or two after a small land-bird lighted on a spar. the evening we hove the lead but could find no bottom.

In

Next morning, the twenty third day from the Capes, we fetched ground at sixty fathoms, and I could have jumped for joy, but for a seasonable corrective from my tranquil companion-" Don't rejoice till we are out of danger!" Imagine how my tune was changed, when the wind chopped about, and we were obliged to drive before it several hours, under great apprehension of being

forced out to sea again, as our captain had been once before, and beat about for two weeks before he could regain his ground.

The wind, however, changed in our favour, and we that night passed the Scilly islands, surrounded with sunken rocks, ever terrible to mariners, but especially since the memorable loss of sir Cloudesly Shovel, one of queen Anne's admirals, in a first rate man of war.

Next day the colour of the water became sensibly paler, and about four o'clock we had the welcome sight of land; which, before night, we discovered to be the Lizard point, by its two lighthouses, which we could just discern through a thick mist.

We passed Plymouth, and the Start, in the night; and next day by noon, perceived the chalky cliffs of the Isle of Wight. Before daybreak next morning I was on deck to see Beachy Head, a promontory that projects perpendicularly into the seaits sides so white as to render a light-house unnecessary.

As the day broke we could distinguish a town or two, far inland, first smoking with morning fires, and then glittering with the beams of the rising sun.

By noon we sailed close under Folkstone, an old dusky place, with a huge square tower for a steeple, surrounded with bleak hills, without tree or shrub. The country improved as we advanced, but the few trees that lined the hedges here and there, were lopped of their branches, and fringed with moss.

All this time we had seen only one vessel in the channel, a West-Indiaman, inward bound, that had lost a mast in the late gales, and been separated from a large fleet, which had been long

at sea.

But taking in a pilot at Dover, and doubling the South Foreland, we suddenly opened upon a fleet of a hundred sail, some of them ships of force, at anchor in the Downs, waiting for a wind.

Passing by Deal, and Ramsgate, and rounding into the bay of the Thames, we met a number of fine ships coming down; and anchored for the night (to my great dissatisfaction) in Margate roads, a place no less exposed to the sea, than the Hoarkills of Delaware, and where many good ships have been lost. The weather, however, favouring us, and the wind chopping round to suit our course, which was now almost right about, we

got up our anchor again about midnight, and sailed prosperously up the Thames, with a train of colliers on the right, stretching in from the eastward, as far as the eye could reach.

We were told that two hundred and forty sail arrived on this and the following day, having been kept back by the winds. that had favoured us, till an unusual scarcity of coal prevailed in London.

In the afternoon we passed another great fleet, chiefly men of war, and transports, anchored at the Nore, (the mouth of the river,) after which we were near enough to see the improvements on its banks, highly cultivated, and interspersed with towns and country seats, beautifully ornamented, upon smooth shorn lawns of the richest verdure, bordered with shrubbery.

Toward evening, on the 12th of April, our twenty-seventh day from Port Penn, we were suddenly awakened from this pleasing dream, off Gravesend, by a premptory summons for all the passengers to go ashore, and give an account of themselves at the alien-office.

At the same instant we were boarded by a press-gang that rushed in upon us like prowling wolves, demanding the seamen's protections, and examining them with merciless voracity. with A river pilot threw himself aboard at the same instant, a couple of custom-house harpies; and as the captain was determined not to lose the tide, which he thought would carry him to London, we picked up a few necessaries, and trusted our selves to the boisterous civility of a Gravesend waterman.

He soon rowed us ashore, and we scarcely felt the pleasure of setting our feet on dry land, as we tagged about after him to find the alien-office-the custom-house-the mayor, from whose custody we were told foreigners were not permitted to stir, till they could obtain permission from the duke of Portland, secretary for the home department, to go up to London, there to be further examined before they could have permission to reside in the land of liberty.

The chief clerk, however, treated us with the utmost civility, only taking away our letters to be put into the post-office, in behalf of the revenue, and politely dismissing us with permission to reside at an inn till passports could be obtained.