from Prince's Island. How near we came to it I cannot say, but that we avoided it was not owing to my own skill, but to Him whose hand led me in the uttermost parts of the sea. Many a successful navigator in these Eastern waters could join me in acknowledging that in some instances his safety has been owing "more to luck than good management" as the common phrase goes, or as one had better say, to a kind Providence. This event gave me an illustration of "Prayer answered by crosses" and in later trials has helped me to say: "Thy will be done." The next night, being in very close quarters among islands and rocks, I took bearings of a light to test my progress, the darkness hiding the dangers from view. A light breeze was blowing, and the bark moved at the rate of about two knots through the water. The light however remained on the same bearing, showing that we gained nothing on it, and I supposed the same strong current was neutralizing all the power of the wind. I was about to come to anchor to avoid the peril of drifting about in the darkness amid so many dangers, when a close inspection of the light with the marine glass, showed it was not on the land, but on board a vessel in shore, sailing with us, and on the other side we soon discovered a rock, which we were passing quite swiftly, the current evidently having changed in the opposite direction. This event supplied another moral reflection: the importance of measuring by a right standard. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: The owners' private signal.] CHAPTER VI. LIFE IN THE EAST INDIES. "It is a goodly sight to see What Heaven hath done for this delicious land."--_Byron._ "And, oh! if there be an Elysium on earth, It is this, it is this."--_Thomas Moore._ The East Indies is a name generally applied to the archipelago lying S.E. of Asia, containing the islands of Sumatra, Java, Borneo, Celebes and others. It was visited by voyagers from the Western World in the 16th century, and since that time Portuguese, Dutch, English and French have controlled parts of its domain. I wish I could affect the reader's imagination as my own senses were impressed, when, after the stormy night, in which we barely escaped shipwreck, we sailed in the early morning along the shores of Java, an island so beautiful in its aspect, so luxuriant in its productions, and so delightful in its varied climates, as to have been claimed by many as the veritable locality of the Garden of Eden. As we sail along, monkeys chatter at us from the trees and rocks that girt the shore; bright plumaged birds are seen on the wing, and the dewy air floats off to us so loaded with odors suggestive of delicious fruits, that one instinctively opens his mouth to devour it. This makes plain an idiom of the Malay language. "To take a walk" is expressed in that tongue by words meaning to eat the air. I can hardly recommend this chamelion diet as a staple food, but it is most excellent for dessert.