Christmas day, the second Christmas since we left our homes in the Sumter. Last year we were buffetting the storms of the North Atlantic near the Azores. Now we are snugly anchored in the Arcas; and how many eventful periods have passed in the interval. Our poor people have been terribly pressed in this wicked and ruthless war, and they have borne privations and sufferings which nothing but an intense patriotism could have sustained. They will live in history as a people worthy to be free, and future generations will be astonished at the folly and fanaticism, want of principle and wickedness, developed by this war among the Puritan population of the North; and in this class nine-tenths of the native population of the northern states may be placed, to such an extent has the "Plymouth Rock" leaven "leavened the whole loaf." A people so devoid of Christian charity, and wanting in so many of the essentials of honesty, cannot but be abandoned to their own folly by a just and benevolent God. Our crew is keeping Christmas by a run on shore, which they all seem to enjoy exceedingly. It is indeed very grateful to the senses to ramble about over even so confined a space as the Arcas, after tossing about at sea in a continual state of excitement for months. Yesterday was the first time I touched the shore since I left Liverpool on the 13th of August last, and I was only one week in Liverpool after a voyage of three weeks from the Bahamas, so that I have in fact been but one week on shore in five months. My thoughts naturally turn on this quiet Christmas day, in this lonely island, to my dear family. I can only hope, and trust them to the protection of a merciful Providence. The only sign of a holiday on board tonight is the usual "splicing of the main brace," _anglice_, giving Jack an extra allowance of grog. Meanwhile "Jack's" thoughts were taking quite a different turn, if reports are to be trusted. Shore leave with no opportunity for a drunken carousal, was to him like the play of Hamlet with the principal character altogether omitted. "Liberty on Christmas, the old pirate!" cried one of the crew, kicking up the carpet of sea kale. "Well, here goes for a quiet life. I can lick any man in the starboard watch." His challenge was immediately accepted, and the net result was a number of broken heads and several men nearly incapacitated for duty.