For my own part, I was in no hurry for the voyage to draw to a close; not only did the dangers of being at sea appear to me no greater than those with which we are beset on land, but I looked upon it as a respite from the pestilence that was ever strutting about the land for which we were bound. What if the steamer did arrive many days before us; would it make any practical difference in the life ahead? Others, I regret to say, thought differently; they fretted and fumed, vilified sailing vessels in general, ours in particular, and made themselves generally miserable, frowning whenever their eye fell on the unoffending sails, and sneering at the “run,” which, seeing that it kept a steady ten or twelve miles an hour, was hardly to be grumbled at. Man is a strange creature, and he exhibits himself under a variety of phases; but nowhere, perhaps, so remarkably as during a long sea-voyage. We had now reached our southernmost point, and were steering in a north-easterly course. The only break in the monotony of this part of the voyage was made by our passing the extremities of these deserted volcanic islets, St. Paul’s and Amsterdam, of which I attempted a sketch, which occasioned no little amusement. These dreary oases of fused rock are said to contain two springs in juxtaposition, one of boiling and the other of cold water. These might, as I reflected, afford invaluable assistance to a shipwrecked mariner, who could possibly boil a fish or a stray gull’s egg in the former, while the latter would supply the means of performing his ablutions and quenching his thirst. The only geographical interest attaching to these spots is that they are equidistant from the Cape of Good Hope, Ceylon, and Tasmania. Meanwhile the ship was rapidly approaching her destination; the days of the voyage were already numbered, and it was resolved to give a grand fancy dress ball on the first evening that we should spend at anchor in the river. From the difference in the colour of the water, it soon became apparent that the remainder of the voyage might be counted by hours; the Gangetic delta was pouring forth its mud from many gaping mouths; and the water grew more and more uninviting, till we at last passed the Pilot Brig, and anon came in sight of a low-lying, muddy-looking coast, fringed with cocoanut trees. In an hour or so we were in the Hooghly; and I cannot say that either the river or its banks impressed me very favourably. We were now in the month of December, which, being the coolest season of the year, is the favourite time of arrival for all sorts and conditions of ships; and it was probably in consequence of this that no steam tug was at first available to tow us the remaining hundred miles. Very reluctantly, therefore, we had to let go the anchor only a short distance from the mouth of the river.