unromantic among the English, and so unpleasing about the niggers, that they spoil the scenery altogether. The thing that strikes me as most remarkable in the cut of these niggers is excessive immodesty; a forward, stupid familiarity, intended for civility, which prejudices me against them worse even than Buxton’s[170] cant did…. I want much to hear about your steam-engine…. I begin to think that the Nonjurors were the last of English divines, and that those since are twaddlers. The more I read, the more I am reconciled to the present state of things in England, and prospects of the Church. It seems to be only the fermentation of filth which has long been in existence, and could not be got rid of otherwise…. And now my ideas run slow, and take more trouble writing than they are worth reading; so, with best love to J[ack].’[171] To the Ven. Archdeacon FROUDE, April 2, 1834. ‘… We left the island [Santa Cruz] at four o’clock on Thursday, the Bishop having been conveyed to Fredericstadt in the Governor’s carriage and four, escorted by an aide-de-camp, and embarking under a salute. We were under weigh in about an hour, with a breeze east-north-east. On Saturday evening we saw, like a pale blue mist rising above the clouds, the outline of the South American mountains. The next morning, when I came on deck, we were within nine miles of the coast, and the gigantic features of the scenery produced the same effect that we observed between Salerno and Amalfi, viz., of making distant objects seem so near each other. The mountains rose boldly out of the sea, as far as the eye could reach before us and behind us, as we sailed along the coast. Their height varies from 5000 to 9000 feet. One of them (the highest) is a perpendicular precipice for 8000 feet: Humboldt describes it as the most remarkable precipice in the world. However, the effect, as a whole, cannot be compared to that of the Italian or Sicilian coast. The mountains are richly covered with wood from the very bottom to the top, except the peaks of the very highest, which are naked granite, but so high that the rocky features, when diminished by the great distance and rendered indistinct by the haze of the hot air, lose all their raciness; so that there is no variety of colour, but a mass of uniform green, or rather gray, more or less pale according to the distance. We coasted along about twelve miles almost under the shadow of the rocks, yet near nine miles from them. Early in the morning they were visible from top to bottom, but indistinct from the dazzle of the sun, which was behind them. About ten o’clock a line of little misty dots formed at a uniform height above the sea, perhaps 3000 feet. This became denser and denser, till it became one impenetrable cloud, above which we could see nothing. About twelve we anchored at La Guayra, which Humboldt says is the hottest place in the world. The thermometer in the cabin window was ninety degrees.