After a passage of about six weeks, we reached Halifax, in Nova Scotia; and I can perfectly recollect the feelings with which I first put my foot on shore in the New World. “At last,” I said to myself, “I am decidedly abroad; and it shall go hard with me but this round globe shall be well tramped over by these feet before I rest!” This resolution has been tolerably well kept; but it is perhaps worthy of remark, that almost the whole of the journeys alluded to have been accomplished in the jog-trot routine of professional avocations, and generally without any express design on my part. It is true I once took a hasty scamper over Europe, and, more lately, a deliberate jaunt in North America; but with these exceptions, and a small trip to Prince Edward’s Island, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, to which I shall possibly advert again,—every league of my voyaging and travelling has been at the expense of His Majesty, that is to say, in the exercise of purely professional duties. I have mentioned this, merely because I think it furnishes a sort of encouragement to naval officers, of all ranks and ages, who, unless they be very stupid, or very unfortunate, or both, may, in the course of their lives, probably have nearly as ample means of observation in foreign parts, as if they had been born to fortunes, and spent them in the sole occupation of travelling. It is surely a pleasant affair to be carried about from place to place free of cost; and perhaps there is also some advantage in our being thus tossed about without any free choice of our own. There is often bitter disappointment, it is true, in being hurried away before our remarks are half made, with our curiosity only half satisfied, to be plunged into new scenes, piping hot from those we have left. But by this means the attention is kept briskly alive; and the powers of observation, being forced to act on the instant, are certainly rendered more acute. From so much, and such varied practice, also, the mind becomes more decided and clear, as well as more prompt, in its conclusions. And in consequence of this accumulation of knowledge, every new country visited appears to be more fertile than the last in objects of interest, till at length the field of view seems so thickly crowded, that the naval traveller, instead of having to search for materials, is generally overpowered by their abundance, and scarcely knows which to lay his hand upon, in order to describe the effect produced.