"We soon made the bay at the west end and ran alongside the mail steamer and let go our anchor, but found to our disappointment that the Governor had gone to town in a carriage sent for him by the officials. After spending a pleasant hour in exchanging visits between the officers of the two steamers, our guests in the meantime partaking of refreshments, we hove up the anchor and started back toward Nassau. "Among our passengers was the gallant Capt. John N. Maffitt, who was then waiting at Nassau to get the _Oreto_, afterwards named the _Florida_, out of irons. We had also Captain Whiting, the American consul at Nassau, who asked permission to go down to the steamer to get his dispatches, which was not denied him, although this man was greatly disliked not only by Confederate sympathizers but by the natives, having, as the Irishman said, winning ways to make everybody hate him. During the run back the consul, overcome by his numerous potations, lay down with his dispatches and was soon asleep. When we aroused him at our destination the dispatches were missing, whereupon he accused Maffitt of stealing them, resulting in a grand row all round. The dispatches were restored to him on the following day, their disappearance being caused by a practical joke on the part of the Confederates. We delivered our passengers in a very shaky condition. "On Monday morning, having turned out bright and early to start work, our attention was attracted to the shore by a noisy and excited group of negroes gathered around the flagstaff of the American consul, gesticulating and pointing to the top of the flagstaff, from which, to my astonishment, was flying a brand new Confederate flag. It soon appeared that some one, said to be a Confederate sympathizer, and whom every one believed to be Maffitt, who was always ready for a joke, had climbed the flagstaff during the night, carrying up with him a Confederate flag and a bucket of slush. The halyards were first unrove, next the Confederate flag was nailed to the staff, and last of all as the joker descended, he slushed the staff all the way to the ground, making it impossible for any one to ascend to remove the ensign which was so hateful to our friend the consul. When Whiting came down to the consulate after breakfast and took in the situation, he performed a war dance around that pole which was one of the most interesting spectacles ever witnessed by the Confederates in Nassau. He then employed a number of Her Majesty's colored subjects with cans of concentrated lye to remove the slush, and, after great difficulty, one of them succeeded in reaching the top of the staff and removed the Confederate flag, replacing the halyards as before; but this was not the last of it. On the following morning a United States man-of-war appeared off the harbor, and when the consul in full official rig took his seat in the stern of his gig he found on reaching the cruiser that he was hard and