Venus shone like a young moon, I fell asleep also, and we slumbered in concert, until awakened by the streaks of dawn. Soon the sun rose with a serene magnificence, well according with the day of holy rest and cheerful expectation which lay before us. The white haze upon the sky rolled away from the blue, and gathered itself into fleecy masses, which stood like pillars around the seaward horizon, brightening with a cheerful tempered light, until, as the sun grew higher, they dissolved away. Meanwhile, on the landward side of our vessel--which had rounded Morant Point in the night, and was now gliding smoothly on--lay in near view the mountains of Jamaica. Coming from the southeast quarter of the island, we were passing under them where they are highest. They rose, seemingly almost from the water's edge, to the height of seven and eight thousand feet, their towering masses broken into gigantic wrinkles and corrugations, whose fantastic unevenness was subdued into harmony by the softening veil of yellowish green darkening above, which clothed them to their tops. Between their base and the sea actually lies one of the most richly cultivated districts of the island, the Plaintain Garden River district. But we were too far out to distinguish much of it; and what little we did see is in my memory absorbed in the image of the verdant giants which rose behind. In the forenoon our pilot came on board, a comfortable, self-possessed black man, who toward sunset brought us off the Palisades. This is the name of the narrow spit of land which forms the outer wall of the magnificent harbor of Kingston. Upon it is situated the naval station of Port Royal, the principal rendezvous of the British fleet in the West Indies. Here is that exquisitely comfortable naval hospital, with its long ranges of green jalousies, excluding the blazing light and admitting the sea breeze, in which the officers and crew of our ship Susquehanna were cared for with such generous hospitality a few years ago, when attacked by yellow fever. The heartburnings of the present may be somewhat lessened by reflecting on some of these mutual offices of kindness in the past. Around the naval station clusters a poor village of perhaps fifteen hundred souls, the miserable remnant of the once splendid city of Port Royal, whose sudden fate I shall relate hereafter.