After the comparatively sequestered series of St. Augustine's Bay, the Comoros, Aden, and Muscat, our next port, Bombay, seemed like returning to city hubbub and accustomed ways. True, Indian life was strange to most of our officers, if not to all; but there was about Bombay that which made you feel you had got back into the world, albeit in many particulars as different from that you had hitherto known as Rip Van Winkle found after his long slumber. Then, a decade only after the great mutiny, travel to India for travel's sake was much more rare than now. The railway system, that great promoter of journeyings, was not complete. Two years later, when returning from China, I found opportunity to go overland from Calcutta to Bombay; but in the interior had to make a long stage by carriage between Jubbulpore and Nagpore. Since that time many have visited and many have written. I shall therefore spare myself and my possible readers the poor portrayal of that which has been already and better described. Johnson's advice to Boswell, "Tell what you have observed yourself," I take to mean something different from those externals the sight of which is common to all; unless, as in the Corsica of Boswell, few go to see them. What you see is that which you personally have the faculty of perceiving; depends upon you as much as upon the object itself. It may not be worth reporting, but it is all you have. I do not think I remember of Bombay anything thus peculiarly my own. I do recall the big snakes we saw lying apparently asleep on the sea, fifty or sixty miles from land. Perhaps readers who have not visited the East may not know that such modified sea-serpents are to be seen there, as is a smaller variety in the Strait of Malacca. From Bombay we made a long leg to Singapore. We had sailed in early February; it was now late September, and our captain, as I have said before, began to feel anxious to reach the station. Owing to this haste, we omitted Ceylon and Calcutta, which did not correspond to the expectation or the wishes of the admiral; and we missed--as I think--orders sent us to take in Siam before coming to Hong Kong. It is very doubtful whether, had we received them, we should have seen more of interest than awaited us shortly after our arrival in Japan. At all events, as in duty bound, I shall imitate my captain, and skip rapidly over this intervening period. There is in it nothing that would justify my formed intention not to enlarge upon that which others have seen and told.