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Pythagoras; who was supposed to have a power of writing upon the Moon by the means of a magic mirror. —See Bayle, art. Pythag.

Alluding to these animated lines in the 44th Carmen of Catullus:—

A very high mountain on one of the Azores, from which the island derives its name. It is said by some to be as high as the Peak of Teneriffe.

I believe it is Guthrie who says, that the inhabitants of the Azores are much addicted to gallantry. This is an assertion in which even Guthrie may be credited.

These islands belong to the Portuguese.

It is the opinion of St. Austin upon Genesis, and I believe of nearly all the Fathers, that birds, like fish, were originally produced from the waters; in defence of which idea they have collected every fanciful circumstance which can tend to prove a kindred similitude between them; συγγενειαν τοις πετομενοις προς τα νηκτα. With this thought in our minds, when we first see the Flying-Fish, we could almost fancy, that we are present at the moment of creation, and witness the birth of the first bird from the waves.

Such romantic works as “The American Farmer's Letters,” and the account of Kentucky by Imlay, would seduce us into a belief, that innocence, peace, and freedom had deserted the rest of the world for Martha's Vineyard and the banks of the Ohio. The French travellers, too, almost all from revolutionary motives, have contributed their share to the diffusion of this flattering misconception. A visit to the country is, however, quite sufficient to correct even the most enthusiastic prepossession.

Norfolk, it must be owned, presents an unfavourable specimen of America. The characteristics of Virginia in general are not such as can delight either the politician or the moralist, and at Norfolk they are exhibited in their least attractive form. At the time when we arrived the yellow fever had not yet disappeared, and every odour that assailed us in the streets very strongly accounted for its visitation.

A trifling attempt at musical composition accompanied this Epistle.

Bermuda.

The Great Dismal Swamp is ten or twelve miles distant from Norfolk, and the Lake in the middle of it (about seven miles long) is called Drummond's Pond.

Lady Donegall, I had reason to suppose, was at this time still in Switzerland, where the well-known powers of her pencil must have been frequently awakened.

The chapel of William Tell on the Lake of Lucerne.

M. Gebelin says, in his Monde Primitif, “Lorsque Strabon crût que les anciens théologiens et poëtes plaçoient les champs élysées dans les isles de l'Océan Atlantique, il n'entendit rien à leur doctrine.” M. Gebelin's supposition, I have no doubt, is the more correct; but that of Strabo is, in the present instance, most to my purpose.

Nothing can be more romantic than the little harbour of St. George's. The number of beautiful islets, the singular clearness of the water, and the animated play of the graceful little boats, gliding for ever between the islands, and seeming to sail from one cedar-grove into another, formed altogether as lovely a miniature of nature's beauties as can well be imagined.

This is an illusion which, to the few who are fanciful enough to indulge in it, renders the scenery of Bermuda particularly interesting. In the short but beautiful twilight of their spring evenings, the white cottages, scattered over the islands, and but partially seen through the trees that surround them, assume often the appearance of little Grecian temples; and a vivid fancy may embellish the poor fisherman's hut with columns such as the pencil of a Claude might imitate. I had one favourite object of this kind in my walks, which the hospitality of its owner robbed me of, by asking me to visit him. He was a plain good man, and received me well and warmly, but I could never turn his house into a Grecian temple again.

We were seven days on our passage from Norfolk to Bermuda, during three of which we were forced to lay-to in a gale of wind. The Driver sloop of war, in which I went, was built at Bermuda of cedar, and is accounted an excellent sea-boat. She was then commanded by my very regretted friend Captain Compton, who in July last was killed aboard the Lilly in an action with a French privateer. Poor Compton! he fell a victim to the strange impolicy of allowing such a miserable thing as the Lilly to remain in the service; so small, crank, and unmanageable, that a well-manned merchant-man was at any time a match for her.

This epigram is by Paul the Silentiary, and may be found in the Analecta of Brunck, vol. iii. p. 72. As the reading there is somewhat different from what I have followed in this translation, I shall give it as I had it in my memory at the time, and as it is in Heinsius, who, I believe, first produced the epigram. See his Poemata.

The water is so clear around the island, that the rocks are seen beneath to a very great depth; and, as we entered the harbour, they appeared to us so near the surface that it seemed impossible we should not strike on them. There is no necessity, of course, for heaving the lead; and the negro pilot, looking down at the rocks from the bow of the ship, takes her through this difficult navigation, with a skill and confidence which seem to astonish some of the oldest sailors.

In Kircher's “Ecstatic Journey to Heaven,” Cosmiel, the genius of the world, gives Theodidactus a boat of asbestos, with which he embarks into the regions of the sun. “Vides (says Cosmiel) hanc asbestinam naviculam commoditati tuæ præparatam.” —Itinerar. I. Dial. i. cap. 5. This work of Kircher abounds with strange fancies.

When the Genius of the world and his fellow-traveller arrive at the planet Venus, they find an island of loveliness, full of odours and intelligences, where angels preside, who shed the cosmetic influence of this planet over the earth; such being, according to astrologers, the “vis influxiva” of Venus. When they are in this part of the heavens, a casuistical question occurs to Theodidactus, and he asks, “Whether baptism may be performed with the waters of Venus?”— “An aquis globi Veneris baptismus institui possit?” to which the Genius answers, “Certainly.”

This idea is Father Kircher's. “Tot animatos soles dixisses.” —Itinerar. I. Dial. i. cap. 5.

This gentleman is attached to the British consulate at Norfolk. His talents are worthy of a much higher sphere; but the excellent dispositions of the family with whom he resides, and the cordial repose he enjoys amongst some of the kindest hearts in the world, should be almost enough to atone to him for the worst caprices of fortune. The consul himself, Colonel Hamilton, is one among the very few instances of a man, ardently loyal to his king, and yet beloved by the Americans. His house is the very temple of hospitality, and I sincerely pity the heart of that stranger who, warm from the welcome of such a board, could sit down to write a libel on his host, in the true spirit of a modern philosophist. See the Travels of the Duke de la Rouchefoucault Liancourt, vol. ii.

Gassendi thinks that the gardens, which Pausanias mentions, in his first book, were those of Epicurus; and Stuart says, in his Antiquities of Athens, “Near this convent (the convent of Hagios Asomatos) is the place called at present Kepoi, or the Gardens; and Ampelos Kepos, or the Vineyard Garden: these were probably the gardens which Pausanias visited.” Vol. i. chap. 2.

This method of polishing pearls, by leaving them awhile to be played with by doves, is mentioned by the fanciful Cardanus, de Rerum Varietat. lib. vii. cap. 34.

In Hercynio Germaniæ saltu inusitata genera alitum accepimus, quarum plumæ, ignium modo, colluceant noctibus. —Plin. lib. x. cap. 47.

The Milesiacs, or Milesian fables, had their origin in Miletus, a luxurious town of Ionia. Aristides was the most celebrated author of these licentious fictions. See Plutarch (in Crasso), who calls them ακολαστα βιβλια.

“Some of the Cretan wines, which Athenæus calls οινος ανθοσμιας, from their fragrancy resembling that of the finest flowers.” —Barry on Wines, chap. vii.

It appears that in very splendid mansions, the floor or pavement was frequently of onyx. Thus Martial: “Calcatusque tuo sub pede lucet onyx.” Epig. 50. lib. xii.

Bracelets of this shape were a favourite ornament among the women of antiquity. Οι επικαρπιοι οφεις και αι χρυσαι πεδαι Θαιδος και Αρισταγορας και Λαιδος φαρμακα. —Philostrat, Epist. xl. Lucian, too, tells us of the βραχιοισι δρακοντες. See his Amores, where he describes the dressing-room of a Grecian lady, and we find the “silver vase,” the rouge, the tooth-powder, and all the “mystic order” of a modern toilet.

Ταραντινιδιον, διαφανες ενδυμα, ωνομασμενον απο της Ταραντινων χρησεως και τρυφης. —Pollux.

Apiana, mentioned by Pliny, lib. xiv. and “now called the Muscatell (a muscarum telis),” says Pancirollus, book i. sect. 1. chap. 17.

I had, at this time, some idea of paying a visit to the West Indies.

The inhabitants pronounce the name as if it were written Bermooda. See the commentators on the words “still-vex'd Bermoothes,” in the Tempest.—I wonder it did not occur to some of those all-reading gentlemen that, possibly, the discoverer of this “island of hogs and devils” might have been no less a personage than the great John Bermudez, who, about the same period (the beginning of the sixteenth century), was sent Patriarch of the Latin church to Ethiopia, and has left us most wonderful stories of the Amazons and the Griffins which he encountered. —Travels of the Jesuits, vol. i. I am afraid, however, it would take the Patriarch rather too much out of his way.

Johnson does not think that Waller was ever at Bermuda; but the “Account of the European Settlements in America” affirms it confidently. (Vol. ii.) I mention this work, however, less for its authority than for the pleasure I feel in quoting an unacknowledged production of the great Edmund Burke.

The seaside or mangrove grape, a native of the West Indies.

The Agave. This, I am aware, is an erroneous notion, but it is quite true enough for poetry. Plato, I think, allows a poet to be “three removes from truth;” τριτατος απο της αληθειας.

Somewhat like the symplegma of Cupid and Psyche at Florence, in which the position of Psyche's hand is finely and delicately expressive of affection. See the Museum Florentinum, tom. ii. tab. 43, 44. There are few subjects on which poetry could be more interestingly employed than in illustrating some of these ancient statues and gems.

Pinkerton has said that “a good history and description of the Bermudas might afford a pleasing addition to the geographical library;” but there certainly are not materials for such a work. The island, since the time of its discovery, has experienced so very few vicissitudes, the people have been so indolent, and their trade so limited, that there is but little which the historian could amplify into importance; and, with respect to the natural productions of the country, the few which the inhabitants can be induced to cultivate are so common in the West Indies, that they have been described by every naturalist who has written any account of those islands.

It is often asserted by the trans-Atlantic politicians that this little colony deserves more attention from the mother-country than it receives, and it certainly possesses advantages of situation, to which we should not be long insensible, if it were once in the hands of an enemy. I was told by a celebrated friend of Washington, at New York, that they had formed a plan for its capture towards the conclusion of the American War; “with the intention (as he expressed himself) of making it a nest of hornets for the annoyance of British trade in that part of the world.” And there is no doubt it lies so conveniently in the track to the West Indies, that an enemy might with ease convert it into a very harassing impediment.

The plan of Bishop Berkeley for a college at Bermuda, where American savages might be converted and educated, though concurred in by the government of the day, was a wild and useless speculation. Mr. Hamilton, who was governor of the island some years since, proposed, if I mistake not, the establishment of a marine academy for the instruction of those children of West Indians, who might be intended for any nautical employment. This was a more rational idea, and for something of this nature the island is admirably calculated. But the plan should be much more extensive, and embrace a general system of education; which would relieve the colonists from the alternative to which they are reduced at present, of either sending their sons to England for instruction, or intrusting them to colleges in the states of America, where ideas, by no means favourable to Great Britain, are very sedulously inculcated.

The women of Bermuda, though not generally handsome, have an affectionate languor in their look and manner, which is always interesting. What the French imply by their epithet aimante seems very much the character of the young Bermudian girls—that predisposition to loving, which, without being awakened by any particular object, diffuses itself through the general manner in a tone of tenderness that never fails to fascinate. The men of the island, I confess, are not very civilised; and the old philosopher, who imagined that, after this life, men would be changed into mules, and women into turtle-doves, would find the metamorphosis in some degree anticipated at Bermuda.

Mountains of Sicily, upon which Daphnis, the first inventor of bucolic poetry, was nursed by the nymphs. See the lively description of these mountains in Diodorus Siculus, lib. iv. Ηραια γαρ ορη κατα την Σικελιαν εστιν, α φασι καλλει, κ. τ. λ.

A ship, ready to sail for England.

I left Bermuda in the Boston about the middle of April, in company with the Cambrian and Leander, aboard the latter of which was the Admiral, Sir Andrew Mitchell, who divides his year between Halifax and Bermuda, and is the very soul of society and good-fellowship to both. We separated in a few days, and the Boston after a short cruise proceeded to New York.

The lively and varying illumination, with which these fire-flies light up the woods at night, gives quite an idea of enchantment. “Puis ces mouches se developpant de l'obscurité de ces arbres et s'approchant de nous, nous les voyions sur les orangers voisins, qu'ils mettoient tout en feu, nous rendant la vue de leurs beaux fruits dorés que la nuit avoit ravie,” &c. &c. —See L'Histoire des Antilles, art. 2. chap.4. liv. i.

Thus Morse. “Here the sciences and the arts of civilised life are to receive their highest improvements: here civil and religious liberty are to flourish, unchecked by the cruel hand of civil or ecclesiastical tyranny: here genius, aided by all the improvements of former ages, is to be exerted in humanising mankind, in expanding and enriching their minds with religious and philosophical knowledge,” &c. &c. —P. 569.

“What will be the old age of this government, if it is thus early decrepit!” Such was the remark of Fauchet, the French minister at Philadelphia, in that famous despatch to his government, which was intercepted by one of our cruisers in the year 1794. This curious memorial may be found in Porcupine's Works, vol. i. p. 279. It remains a striking monument of republican intrigue on one side and republican profligacy on the other; and I would recommend the perusal of it to every honest politician, who may labour under a moment's delusion with respect to the purity of American patriotism.

“Nous voyons que, dans les pays où l'on n'est affecté que de l'esprit de commerce, on trafique de toutes les actions humaines et de toutes les vertus morales.” —Montesquieu, de l'Esprit des Lois, liv. xx. chap. 2.

I trust I shall not be suspected of a wish to justify those arbitrary steps of the English government which the colonies found it so necessary to resist; my only object here is to expose the selfish motives of some of the leading American demagogues.

The most persevering enemy to the interests of this country, amongst the politicians of the western world, has been a Virginian merchant, who, finding it easier to settle his conscience than his debts, was one of the first to raise the standard against Great Britain, and has ever since endeavoured to revenge upon the whole country the obligations which he lies under to a few of its merchants.

See Porcupine's account of the Pennsylvania Insurrection in 1794. In short, see Porcupine's works throughout, for ample corroboration of every sentiment which I have ventured to express. In saying this, I refer less to the comments of that writer than to the occurrences which he has related and the documents which he has preserved. Opinion may be suspected of bias, but facts speak for themselves.

In Virginia the effects of this system begin to be felt rather seriously. While the master raves of liberty, the slave cannot but catch the contagion, and accordingly there seldom elapses a month without some alarm of insurrection amongst the negroes. The accession of Louisiana, it is feared, will increase this embarrassment; as the numerous emigrations, which are expected to take place, from the southern states to this newly acquired territory, will considerably diminish the white population, and thus strengthen the proportion of negroes, to a degree which must ultimately be ruinous.

The “black Aspasia” of the present ------ of the United States, inter Avernales haud ignotissima nymphas, has given rise to much pleasantry among the anti-democrat wits in America.

“On the original location of the ground now allotted for the seat of the Federal City (says Mr. Weld) the identical spot on which the capitol now stands was called Rome. This anecdote is related by many as a certain prognostic of the future magnificence of this city, which is to be, as it were, a second Rome.” —Weld's Travels, letter iv.

A little stream runs through the city, which, with intolerable affectation, they have styled the Tiber. It was originally called Goose-Creek.

“To be under the necessity of going through a deep wood for one or two miles, perhaps, in order to see a next-door neighbour, and in the same city, is a curious and, I believe, a novel circumstance.” —Weld, letter iv.

The Federal City (if it must be called a city) has not been much increased since Mr. Weld visited it. Most of the public buildings, which were then in some degree of forwardness, have been since utterly suspended. The hotel is already a ruin; a great part of its roof has fallen in, and the rooms are left to be occupied gratuitously by the miserable Scotch and Irish emigrants. The President's house, a very noble structure, is by no means suited to the philosophical humility of its present possessor, who inhabits but a corner of the mansion himself, and abandons the rest to a state of uncleanly desolation, which those who are not philosophers cannot look at without regret. This grand edifice is encircled by a very rude paling, through which a common rustic stile introduces the visiters of the first man in America. With respect to all that is within the house, I shall imitate the prudent forbearance of Herodotus, and say, τα δε εν απορρητω.

The private buildings exhibit the same characteristic display of arrogant speculation and premature ruin; and the few ranges of houses which were begun some years ago have remained so long waste and unfinished that they are now for the most part dilapidated.

The picture which Buffon and De Pauw have drawn of the American Indian, though very humiliating, is, as far as I can judge, much more correct than the flattering representations which Mr. Jefferson has given us. See the Notes on Virginia, where this gentleman endeavours to disprove in general the opinion maintained so strongly by some philosophers that nature (as Mr. Jefferson expresses it) be-littles her productions in the western world. M. de Pauw attributes the imperfection of animal life in America to the ravages of a very recent deluge, from whose effects upon its soil and atmosphere it has not yet sufficiently recovered. —Recherches sur les Américains, part i. tom. i. p. 102.

On a small hill near the capitol there is to be an equestrian statue of General Washington.

In the ferment which the French revolution excited among the democrats of America, and the licentious sympathy with which they shared in the wildest excesses of jacobinism, we may find one source of that vulgarity of vice, that hostility to all the graces of life, which distinguishes the present demagogues of the United States, and has become indeed too generally the characteristic of their countrymen. But there is another cause of the corruption of private morals, which, encouraged as it is by the government, and identified with the interests of the community, seems to threaten the decay of all honest principle in America. I allude to those fraudulent violations of neutrality to which they are indebted for the most lucrative part of their commerce, and by which they have so long infringed and counteracted the maritime rights and advantages of this country. This unwarrantable trade is necessarily abetted by such a system of collusion, imposture, and perjury, as cannot fail to spread rapid contamination around it.

There is a dreary and savage character in the country immediately about these Falls, which is much more in harmony with the wildness of such a scene than the cultivated lands in the neighbourhood of Niagara. See the drawing of them in Mr. Weld's book. According to him, the perpendicular height of the Cohos Fall is fifty feet; but the Marquis de Chastellux makes it seventy-six.

The fine rainbow, which is continually forming and dissolving, as the spray rises into the light of the sun, is perhaps the most interesting beauty which these wonderful cataracts exhibit.

The idea of this poem occurred to me in passing through the very dreary wilderness between Batavia, a new settlement in the midst of the woods, and the little village of Buffalo upon Lake Erie. This is the most fatiguing part of the route, in travelling through the Genesee country to Niagara.

“The Five Confederated Nations (of Indians) were settled along the banks of the Susquehannah and the adjacent country, until the year 1779, when General Sullivan, with an army of 4000 men, drove them from their country to Niagara, where, being obliged to live on salted provisions, to which they were unaccustomed, great numbers of them died. Two hundred of them, it is said, were buried in one grave, where they had encamped.” —Morse's American Geography.

The alligator, who is supposed to lie in a torpid state all the winter, in the bank of some creek or pond, having previously swallowed a large number of pine-knots, which are his only sustenance during the time.

This was the mode of punishment for murder (as Charlevoix tells us) among the Hurons. “They laid the dead body upon poles at the top of a cabin, and the murderer was obliged to remain several days together, and to receive all that dropped from the carcass, not only on himself but on his food.”

“We find also collars of porcelain, tobacco, ears of maize, skins, &c. by the side of difficult and dangerous ways, on rocks, or by the side of the falls; and these are so many offerings made to the spirits which preside in these places.” —See Charlevoix's Letter on the Traditions and the Religion of the Savages of Canada.

Father Hennepin too mentions this ceremony; he also says, “We took notice of one barbarian, who made a kind of sacrifice upon an oak at the Cascade of St. Anthony of Padua, upon the river Mississippi.” —See Hennepin's Voyage into North America.

This epithet was suggested by Charlevoix's striking description of the confluence of the Missouri with the Mississippi. “I believe this is the finest confluence in the world. The two rivers are much of the same breadth, each about half a league; but the Missouri is by far the most rapid, and seems to enter the Mississippi like a conqueror, through which it carries its white waves to the opposite shore, without mixing them: afterwards it gives its colour to the Mississippi, which it never loses again, but carries quite down to the sea.” —Letter xxvii.

Alluding to the fanciful notion of “words congealed in northern air.”

In the society of Mr. Dennie and his friends, at Philadelphia, I passed the few agreeable moments which my tour through the States afforded me. Mr. Dennie has succeeded in diffusing through this cultivated little circle that love for good literature and sound politics, which he feels so zealously himself, and which is so very rarely the characteristic of his countrymen. They will not, I trust, accuse me of illiberality for the picture which I have given of the ignorance and corruption that surround them. If I did not hate, as I ought, the rabble to which they are opposed, I could not value, as I do, the spirit with which they defy it; and in learning from them what Americans can be, I but see with the more indignation what Americans are.

I wrote these words to an air which our boatmen sung to us frequently. The wind was so unfavourable that they were obliged to row all the way, and we were five days in descending the river from Kingston to Montreal, exposed to an intense sun during the day, and at night forced to take shelter from the dews in any miserable hut upon the banks that would receive us. But the magnificent scenery of the St. Lawrence repays all such difficulties.

Our voyageurs had good voices, and sung perfectly in tune together. The original words of the air, to which I adapted these stanzas, appeared to be a long, incoherent story, of which I could understand but little, from the barbarous pronunciation of the Canadians. It begins

And the refrain to every verse was, I ventured to harmonise this air, and have published it. Without that charm which association gives to every little memorial of scenes or feelings that are past, the melody may, perhaps, be thought common and trifling; but I remember when we have entered, at sunset, upon one of those beautiful lakes, into which the St. Lawrence so grandly and unexpectedly opens, I have heard this simple air with a pleasure which the finest compositions of the first masters have never given me; and now there is not a note of it which does not recall to my memory the dip of our oars in the St. Lawrence, the flight of our boat down the Rapids, and all those new and fanciful impressions to which my heart was alive during the whole of this very interesting voyage.

The above stanzas are supposed to be sung by those voyageurs who go to the Grand Portage by the Utawas River. For an account of this wonderful undertaking, see Sir Alexander Mackenzie's General History of the Fur Trade, prefixed to his Journal.

“At the Rapid of St. Ann they are obliged to take out part, if not the whole, of their lading. It is from this spot the Canadians consider they take their departure, as it possesses the last church on the island, which is dedicated to the tutelar saint of voyagers.” —Mackenzie, General History of the Fur Trade.

“Avendo essi per costume di avere in venerazione gli alberi grandi et antichi, quasi che siano spesso ricettaccoli di anime beate.” —Pietro della Valle, part. second., lettera 16 da i giardini di Sciraz.

Anburey, in his Travels, has noticed this shooting illumination which porpoises diffuse at night through the river St. Lawrence. —Vol. i. p. 29.

The glass-snake is brittle and transparent.

“The departed spirit goes into the Country of Souls, where, according to some, it is transformed into a dove.” —Charlevoix, upon the Traditions and the Religion of the Savages of Canada. See the curious fable of the American Orpheus in Lafitau, tom. i. p. 402.

“The mountains appeared to be sprinkled with white stones, which glistened in the sun, and were called by the Indians manetoe aseniah, or spirit-stones.” —Mackenzie's Journal.

These lines were suggested by Carver's description of one of the American lakes. “When it was calm,” he says, “and the sun shone bright, I could sit in my canoe, where the depth was upwards of six fathoms, and plainly see huge piles of stone at the bottom, of different shapes, some of which appeared as if they had been hewn; the water was at this time as pure and transparent as air, and my canoe seemed as if it hung suspended in that element. It was impossible to look attentively through this limpid medium, at the rocks below, without finding, before many minutes were elapsed, your head swim and your eyes no longer able to behold the dazzling scene.”

Après avoir traversé plusieurs isles peu considérables, nous en trouvâmes le quatrième jour une fameuse nommèe l'Isle de Manitoualin. —Voyages du Baron de Lahontan, tom. i. let. 15. Manataulin signifies a Place of Spirits, and this island in Lake Huron is held sacred by the Indians.

“The Wakon-Bird, which probably is of the same species with the bird of Paradise, receives its name from the ideas the Indians have of its superior excellence; the Wakon-Bird being, in their language, the Bird of the Great Spirit.” —Morse.

The islands of Lake Erie are surrounded to a considerable distance by the large pond-lily, whose leaves spread thickly over the surface of the lake, and form a kind of bed for the water-snakes in summer.

“The gold thread is of the vine kind, and grows in swamps. The roots spread themselves just under the surface of the morasses, and are easily drawn out by handfuls. They resemble a large entangled skein of silk, and are of a bright yellow.” —Morse.

“L'oiseau mouche, gros comme un hanneton, est de toutes couleurs, vives et changeantes: il tire sa subsistence des fleurs commes les abeilles; son nid est fait d'un cotton très-fin suspendu à une branche d'arbre.” —Voyages aux Indes Occidentales, par M. Bossu, seconde part, lett. xx.

Emberiza hyemalis. —See Imlay's Kentucky, p. 280.

Lafitau supposes that there was an order of vestals established among the Iroquois Indians. —Mœurs des Sauvages Américains, &c. tom. i. p. 173.

Dante, Purgator. cant. ii.

This is one of the Magdalen Islands, and, singularly enough, is the property of Sir Isaac Coffin. The above lines were suggested by a superstition very common among sailors, who call this ghost-ship, I think, “the flying Dutchman.”

We were thirteen days on our passage from Quebec to Halifax, and I had been so spoiled by the truly splendid hospitality of my friends of the Phaeton and Boston, that I was but ill prepared for the miseries of a Canadian vessel. The weather, however, was pleasant, and the scenery along the river delightful. Our passage through the Gut of Canso, with a bright sky and a fair wind, was particularly striking and romantic.

Commanded by Captain J. E. Douglas, with whom I returned to England, and to whom I am indebted for many, many kindnesses. In truth, I should but offend the delicacy of my friend Douglas, and, at the same time, do injustice to my own feelings of gratitude, did I attempt to say how much I owe to him.

Sir John Wentworth, the Governor of Nova-Scotia, very kindly allowed me to accompany him on his visit to the College, which they have lately established at Windsor, about forty miles from Halifax, and I was indeed most pleasantly surprised by the beauty and fertility of the country which opened upon us after the bleak and rocky wilderness by which Halifax is surrounded.—I was told that, in travelling onwards, we should find the soil and the scenery improve, and it gave me much pleasure to know that the worthy Governor has by no means such an “inamabile regnum” as I was, at first sight, inclined to believe.