I left India on Lady-day, looked at Persia on Easter Sunday, and seven days after found myself in Arabia Felix. In a small cove, surrounded by bare rocks, heated through, out of the reach of air as well as wind, lies the good ship Benares, in the great cabin of which, stretched on a couch, lie I. But though weak I am well--relaxed but not disordered. Praise to His grace who fulfils to me a promise which I have scarcely a right to claim--'I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest.' Last night I went ashore for the first time with Captain Lockett; we walked through the bazaar and up the hill, but saw nothing but what was Indian or worse. The Imam or Sultan is about thirty miles off, fighting, it is said, for his kingdom, with the Wahabees. You will be happy to learn that the pirates whom we were to scourge are got out of our way, so that I may now hope to get safe through the Gulf without being made to witness the bloody scenes of war. _April 24._--Went with one English party and two Armenians and an Arab who served as guard and guide, to see a remarkable pass about a mile from the town, and a garden planted by a Hindu in a little valley beyond. There was nothing to see, only the little bit of green in this wilderness seemed to the Arab a great curiosity. I conversed a good deal with him, but particularly with his African slave, who was very intelligent about religion. The latter knew as much about his religion as most mountaineers, and withal was so interested, that he would not cease from his argument till I left the shore. To Corrie he wrote on the same day: The Imam of Muscat murdered his uncle, and sits on the throne in the place of his elder brother, who is here a cipher. Last night the Captain went ashore to a council of state, to consider the relations subsisting between the Government of Bombay and these mighty chieftains. I attended as interpreter. The Company's agent is an old Hindu who could not get off his bed. An old man in whom pride and stupidity seemed to contend for empire sat opposite to him. This was the Wazeer. Between them sat I, opposite to me the Captain. The Wazeer uttered something in Arabic, not one word of which could I understand. The old Hindu explained in Persian, for he has almost forgot his Hindi, and I to the Captain in English. We are all impatient to get away from this place. To the last he was busy with his Arabic translation of Scripture. The ships of war crossed and recrossed the Gulf from shore to shore, surveying its coasts and islands in the heat of May, tempered by a north-wester which tossed them about. On May 6 he wrote in his _Journal_: Much cast down through a sinful propensity, which I little thought was in me at all, till occasion manifested its existence. On the 19th: