The Minden hospital ship is a fine 74; and as all the guns, masts, and stores, had been landed at the time that she was selected for the duty, there was great accommodation on board of her; but great as it was, unfortunately there was not sufficient to meet the demands upon it in this unhealthy climate. A description of her internal arrangement may not be uninteresting. The quarter-deck and poop was set apart for the convalescents; but the heat of the sun was so overpowering, that it was not until late in the afternoon that they could breathe the purer atmosphere. Long confinement below had left them pale and wan, and their unsteady gait proved how much they had suffered in their constitution, and how narrowly they had escaped the grave. To some this escape had been beneficial, as their constant perusal of the Bible established; others, if they even had during their illness alarms about their future state, had already dismissed them from their thoughts, and were impatiently awaiting their return to health to return to past folly and vice. The main deck was allotted to the medical and other officers belonging to the ship, the seamen who composed the ship's company, and also on this deck were located the seamen who had been discharged cured, and who then waited for the arrival of their ships, which were absent from Hong Kong. On this deck, abaft all, was the inspector's cabin, and adjoining it the mess-room of the assistant-surgeons, who, like all their class, rendered callous by time and habit to their dangerous and painful duty, thought only of driving away the memory of the daily mortality to which they were witnesses by jovial living and mirth. Indeed nothing could be a more harassing scene than that of the lower deck, where the patients were located. Under any circumstances an hospital is a depressing and afflicting sight, even with all the advantages of clean well-regulated wards, attentive nurses, and pure ventilation. Imagine then the feelings of a sick wretch, stretched on a canvass cot, who is first hoisted up the ship's side, and then lowered down a dark hatchway (filled with anxiety and forebodings as to his ever leaving the vessel alive) to the scene of misery which I am about to describe--the lower deck of the Minden hospital ship.