On the 14th of February we discovered a tant vessel to the windward of us. It proved to be a steamer under sail alone, her engines out of gear and dragging her wheels. She stood down in our direction as if desirous of speaking us, and many expressed much surprise at our not stopping, but all at once we had stopped, and the stranger shot across our stern. In answer to the hail, “What ship is that?” the reply was: “Her majesty’s steamer Styx, bound to the Mauritius; please report us under sail.” Our stopping was involuntary, a screw of one of the “cut-offs” to our engines having come out, which was promptly fixed with a block of wood by one of the admirable engineers which it was the good fortune of the Mississippi to have; so that we were ready to go ahead again in a very few minutes. The Englishman, no doubt, was none the wiser for the belief that we stopped in courtesy to him. The weather just before reaching Mauritius was much smoother than it had been; the sun now came up upon the right, and his going down in the Indian ocean at night, was a sight most beautiful to look upon, its whole bosom bathed in fiery floods, and way above, tower above tower, rose in radiance and glory illuminated clouds. When our band’s best strains were filling the ship at evening and these sights preceded night, we could hardly realize that we were in the Indian ocean—the ocean of squalls, calms, heavy rains, gale, storm, and hurricane. CHAPTER IV. About 11 o’clock on our fifteenth morning out from the Cape of Good Hope, the southwestern end of the island of Mauritius was visible from the masthead, and we put on all our furnaces so as to reach Port Louis before night. On approaching the land we ran for two hours, past highly-tilled fields encompassing the cosy houses of the planters, sloping to the water’s edge in living green. As we neared the small crescent on which is built the little town of Port Louis, we were boarded by two English harbor-masters, who conducted us to our anchorage, and assisted in mooring the ship head and stern, as the place is too contracted for a vessel of any size to swing in. Their costume showed the philosophy which John Bull always carries into torrid temperatures. They were dressed in white linen roundabouts, pants and shoes, and on their heads were wide-brimmed hats, made of the pith of a tree and covered with white. We had gotten the ship secured just about the time a gun from one of the forts nigh us, announced the hour to be 8 o’clock. I sat upon the wheel-house looking at the necklace of lights that marked the town; the moon as if moved by the notes of our band which was playing delightfully “Katy Darling,” and the “Old Folks at Home,” seemed to rise more rapidly, and as it came it displayed the lofty outline of Peter Botte mountain, of Penny Magazine memory; the tall palms that fringed the beach on the right looked more stately and graceful in the silver light, and the scene altogether was