lovely in colour, vegetables that only the rich luxuriance of an African garden could supply, and numerous other nameless nothings, with delicious wines and costly liqueurs, neatness, attention, and kindness, combined to form our repast, and counteract a slight suspicion of crocodiles' tails and stewed lizard, for where ignorance is bliss a fellow is surely a fool if he is wise. We spent a most pleasant evening in asking questions, spinning yarns, singing songs, and making love. The younger daughter--sweet child of the desert--sang `Amante de alguno;' her sister played a selection from `La Traviata;' next, the consul's lady favoured us with something pensive and sad, having reference, I think, to bright eyes, bleeding hearts, love, and slow death; then, the Parsee chanted a Persian hymn with an "Allalallala," instead of Fol-di-riddle-ido as a chorus, which elicited "Fra poco a me" from the Portuguese lieutenant; and this last caused our commander to seat himself at the piano, turn up the white of his eyes, and in very lugubrious tones question the probability of "Gentle Annie's" ever reappearing in any spring-time whatever; then, amid so much musical sentimentality and woe, it was not likely that I was to hold my peace, so I lifted up my voice and sang-- "Cauld kail in Aberdeen, An' cas ticks in Strathbogie; Ilka chiel maun hae a quean Bit leeze me on ma cogie--" with a pathos that caused the tears to trickle over and adown the nose of the younger daughter--she was of the gushing temperament--and didn't leave a dry eye in the room. The song brought down the house--so to speak--and I was the hero for the rest of the evening. Before parting for the night we also sang `Auld lang syne,' copies of the words having been written out and distributed, to prevent mistakes; this was supposed by our hostess to be the English national anthem. It was with no small amount of regret that we parted from our friends next day; a fresh breeze carried us down stream, and, except our running aground once or twice, and being nearly drowned in crossing the bar, we arrived safely on board our saucy gunboat. ------------------------------------------------------------------------