blue, now exhibited in its latter days, like a dying dolphin, a variety of interesting shades; a pair of tight nankeens, extending about half-way down the calf, encased his lower extremities, very fully exhibiting their sturdy and unsymmetrical proportions, in which the line of beauty, admitting that to be a curve, had by Dame Nature been most capriciously applied. He would have met with a distinguished reception in Laputa, being built on strictly mathematical principles; for one leg exhibited the segment of a circle, the other something very like an obtuse angle. In a sinewy and weather beaten hand, “spotted like the toad,” he grasped a huge telescope, covered with rusty green baize, the length of which was nearly “the standard of a man;” whilst a large white hat, which bore nearly the same proportion to his size that a mushroom does to its stalk, completed a manly, but not very inviting, portrait. “Mr. Merryweather, ma gude friend, I’m glad to see ye luking sae weel,” exclaimed our Scotch commander, who, it appeared, was an old acquaintance of the pilot’s. “Why, somebody telt me at Madras, that ye’ed been near deeing sin’ we were here last.” “Ay, ay, they told you right, captain; I had a very tightish touch of the _mollera corbus_, or whatever ’tis called, after you left us. Yes, I was within a pint of getting a birth in Padree Shepherd’s godown; howsomever, the old ’ooman and Dr. Dusgooly brought my head round to the wind somehow, and now I’m as fresh as a lark, as a man might say in a manner, and ready for a tumbler of your toddy, captain, with as little daylight in it as you please,—ha, ha, ha!” Thus he ran on for some time, and then in a similar style, gave us the latest news of the presidency, which, to the best of my recollection, consisted of a mutiny, death of a puisne judge, and a talked-of-war with Nundy Row Bickermajeet, a potentate of whom none of us had heard before. The captain now duly deposed, Mr. Merryweather took charge of the vessel, and marched up and down the deck with all the confidence of a small man invested with “a little brief authority,” now peering under the sail, and conning the bearings of the buoys, which here and there rode gallantly in the channel, like the huge floats of some giant “bobbing for whale;” anon asking briskly the man at the wheel how her head was, or thundering out some peremptory order for trimming or shortening the sail. Thus we glided on through the turbid channel, whilst strong ripples or long lines of surf, on either hand, with here and there the slanting masts of a stranded vessel, indicated the perilous nature of the navigation. At last we caught a glimpse of a small island, but recently emerged from the waves, being like many others at the mouths of great rivers, of rapid diluvial formation, and immediately after, the low, marshy and jungle-covered shores of Saugor Island broke in sight.