before, to listen to his public crier, and willingly do accordingly. While I was giving the bear cake to eat, Mercury read an oration, some parts of which were hermetically sealed from my comprehension; however, he urged us to admire Amphitritty, a woman, as he assured us, as remarkable for the hamiableness of her disposition, as, we saw, she was for the helegancy of her person. He finished by repeating to us youngsters those three invaluable maxims which will carry a man safe through the world.

1. Never heave anything to windward except hot water and ashes.

2. Never drink small beer when you can get strong, unless you like small beer better.

3. Never kiss the maid when you may kiss the mistress, unless, as aforesaid, you happen to like kissing the maid better.

The pageant passed off; but two water bailiffs came and tapped me on the shoulder, with a "You're wanted." It made me think of my debts. They wished to blindfold me, but I was determined to be shaved, like Ney, with my eyes wide open. As I walked slowly to the forecastle I was considerably washed by a dozen buckets of water sent down upon me from the main top and yard; then I mounted the ladder; at the top stood the

doctor on one side and the barber on the other; the medical man felt my pulse, said it fluttered a little, and gave me a saline draft from an eau de Cologne bottle, and gently pushed me into a deep purse bag half full of water. Thrice I essayed to get out; thrice the pensile sail tripped me up, and Bear, ungrateful Bear, who was rolling about at the bottom, caught me in an amorous hug, and dallied with me with his tarry palms. At last I doubled him up with a smashing hit in the wind, stood upon him and clambered out, knocked down the shaver, and ran through a Niagara of water to my cabin.

After this, Ducking began in all its forms, under every possible modification of splashing and immersion. There was the Duck courteous, the Duck oblique, the Duck direct, the Duck upright, the Duck downright, the bucket Duck, the tub Duck, the shower Duck, and the Duck and Drake.

"There was water, water everywhere,

And not a drop to drink."

A fine water-piece.

But Neptune sent the trades. Full on our larboard quarter did they blow, every sail was set, the flying fish glided by us, bonitos and albicores played round the bows, dolphins gleamed in our

wake, ever and anon a shark, and once a great emerald-colored whale kept us company, till, on the morning of the 29th of January, we made the green shores of Barbados, and cast our anchor in Carlisle Bay.

BARBADOS.

How a man's heart swells within him, when, after sea and sky and sky and sea for nearly a month, he first sees the kindly land beckon to him over the salt waves! And that land tropical! Carlisle Bay sleeping like an infant, and countenanced like the sky on a June morning, the warrior pendants, the merchant signals, the graceful gleaming boats, the dark sailors, the circling town, the silver strand and the long shrouding avenues of immortal palms greenly fringing the blue ocean! It is a beautiful scene in itself, but thrice beautiful is it to the weary mariner who deeply feels that land was made for him.

I was present when the first Protestant bishop arrived in the bay, and the landing was a spectacle which I shall not easily forget. The ships of war were dressed and their yards manned, and salutes fired; this was pretty and common; but such a sight as the Carenage presented very few have ever witnessed. On the quay, on the mole, on boats, on posts, on house tops, through doors and windows, wherever a human foot could stand, was

one appalling mass of black faces. As the barge passed slowly along, the emotions of the multitude were absolutely tremendous; they threw up their arms and waved their handkerchiefs, they danced, and jumped, and rolled on the ground, they sung and screamed and shouted and roared, till the whole surface of the place seemed to be one huge grin of delight. Then they broke out into a thousand wild exclamations of joy and passionate congratulations, uttered with such vehemence that, new as it was then to me, it made me tremble, and gave me a deep sense of the nervous irritability and violent feelings of a people with whom I was becoming for the first time acquainted.

Barbados is the most ancient colony in the British empire. It has never changed hands, and been invaded once only by the forces of the Long Parliament*. It was the asylum for the royalists,

* Sir George Ascue appeared off Bridge Town on the 16th October, 1651, and seized a few ships in Carlisle Bay; but Francis Lord Willoughby, the governor, presented such a determined front, that the parliamentary leader could effect no landing till the January following, when he carried the fort at Speight's after a severe struggle. On the 16th of the same month an easy and honorable capitulation took place, and Lord Willoughby went to Europe.

In 1664 De Ruyter attacked the forts in Carlisle Bay, but met with such a reception that he prudently sheered off to leeward.