But the satisfaction of the Portuguese was as nothing compared with the joy of a few hundred Frenchmen, a remnant of the Strossy expedition of the year before, who had lost all hope of ever leaving the Azores again, and, having little money at the first, had been treated with any thing but hospitality by their unwilling hosts. These poor fellows mixed with the crowd in the streets, kept the commandant’s company in sight, and running into the quarters assigned the latter, met them with such antics and embraces as caused the Gallic army to suppose at first that they had fallen into an ambuscade of madmen. Their two captains gave De Chaste a full narration of their sufferings, which was impartial in the main, and tended very little to elevate the Portuguese residents in the eyes of their audience, whose fancy for that people was not great from the beginning. “Sirs,” replied the commandant at the end, with his customary high-toned suavity, looking around him, “we must only remember this is done at the will of our queen, and act as loyal gentlemen should. For my part, I will be content with brown bread and water and living in the open air, as we are all accustomed to, to have the satisfaction of defeating the landing of so good a soldier as the Marquis of Santa-Cruz, and to-morrow I will examine in person the accessible points of the island, which are only three in number.” “Three!” cried Capt. Baptista, an Italian, one of the Strossy fugitives, “there are thirty! He must have been a rank liar, who told you so, M. le Commandant.” “That can hardly be,” returned De Chaste, gravely, “for it was the king of Portugal himself who gave the information.” “Oh, if it comes to that one had best bite his tongue,” grumbled the Italian to De Haye, who stood next him. “But a parrot’s word is no better than a magpie’s, and so our general will find out.” [_To be continued._ * * * * * A VISIT TO STATEN ISLAND. BY MRS. L. H. SIGOURNEY. I have always had an especial fondness for islands. When, in earlier days, Fancy fashioned some favorite abode, it was often in the aspiration of Moore, “Oh! had we some green little Isle of our own!” I am inclined to think there is something in Nature to sanction this preference. Perhaps the safety of an insular situation from border inroad, and the wild foray, might have given it pre-eminence in feudal or barbarous times. A strange illusion seemed to linger around it, in days of yore: “We, islanders,” said Camden, “are lunares—or the moon’s men.”