Gently rolling hills within an easy sloping shore, covered with verdure, chequered with groves of trees and shrubbery, studded with numerous white buildings, and animated with groups of men and cattle, all standing in relief near the foot of a lofty mountain, which in the distance reared its majestic head above the clouds, offered to mariners long confined to a wide waste of water the highest reward for their enterprise and perseverance;--the heartfelt satisfaction, that it was to their courage and skill that their fellow citizens would be indebted for the contemplation of so much loveliness. Here there was nothing wanting to a perfect landscape. Plain, hill, and dell sometimes rising with an easy slope, at others, broken, abrupt, or craggy; with an ocean in front, and a mountain in the rear, it was complete. When the bright light of the sun first presented distant objects distinctly to our view, there were great numbers of vessels and boats in sight, mostly near the shore. We had repeatedly seen them during the night flitting past us like the shades of departed mortals. Immediately on observing our extraordinary appearance, they all retired towards an opening in the land to the northward, whither we followed them, and soon found that the apparent opening in the shore was occasioned by an island a short distance from the coast, having a roadstead within it, in which were several vessels at anchor. After hoisting out our boats, and seeing our guns in order, I stood in to the roadstead, with my boats ahead. As we approached the anchorage, the vessels all retired into the mouth of a river which they ascended until quite out of sight. At noon, on the 24th of December, we anchored in 14 fathoms water, on a fine sandy bottom. This land, out of gratitude to Capt. Symmes for his sublime theory, I immediately named Symzonia. The coast lay about S. S. W. and N. N. E. In the roadstead we were sheltered from all winds except those which blew directly along shore. These were not much to be feared, for we had found the prevailing W. S. W. winds to blow as steady as a trade wind for several days without any gales or stormy weather.