Most of the survivors, indeed, have experienced, that the summer of life which succeeded to this opening season of our professional existence in the Leander, has been as full of enjoyment as we had hoped for, and that life has gone on to furnish us only with more extensive views and higher motives to action. It has also taught us, to discover that the real and permanent pleasures of life lie close alongside of its duties, and that as very much of our success certainly depends upon ourselves, so does very nearly all our happiness likewise. On the 6th of December, we sailed from Halifax, with a fresh north-westerly wind, in a bitter cold day, so that the harbour was covered with a vapour called ‘the barber,’ a sort of low fog, which clings to the surface of the water, and sweeps along with these biting winter blasts, in such a manner as to cut one to the very bone. It is evidently caused by the condensation of the moisture close to the water in the severe cold. The thermometer, when we sailed, was eleven degrees below zero; and nothing but the violence of the wind, which broke the surface into a sheet of foam, prevented our being frozen in, like the north-western voyagers at Melville Island. As we shot past one of the lower wharfs of the town of Halifax, just before coming to the narrow passage between George’s Island and the main land, on the south side of this magnificent harbour, a boat put off with a gentleman, who, by some accident, had missed his passage. They succeeded in getting alongside the ship; but, in seizing hold of a rope which was thrown to them from the main-chains, the boatmen, in their hurry, caught a turn with it round the after-thwart, instead of making it fast somewhere in the bow of the boat. The inevitable consequence of this proceeding was, to raise the stern of the boat out of the water, and, of course, to plunge her nose under the surface. Even a landsman will comprehend how this happened, when it is mentioned that the ship was running past at the rate of ten knots. In the twinkling of an eye, the whole party, officer, boatmen, and all, were seen floating about, grasping at the oars or striking out for the land, distant, fortunately, only a few yards from them; for the water thereabouts is so deep, that a ship, in sailing out or in, may safely graze the shore.