On the 15th of March we left Point de Galle, and headed across the bay of Bengal, in the direction of the northwest end of Sumatra. We did not take in our entire quantity of coal at Ceylon, but got on board fifty tons of the wood of the place, to try the experiment of its burning in our furnaces. It did not answer; the expense of consumption per hour was twenty dollars, while coal would have been about six, and producing less steam, while it induced greater danger of setting fire to the ship. In our run across the bay of Bengal we had a smooth sea, hot weather, and moonlight nights. In five days we were off the island of Nicobar, and entered the straits of Malacca, the weather changing to squally and rainy. Here we passed the English oriental mail-steamer from China, having on board commodore Aulick, whose late command of the East India squadron was soon to be assumed by the commodore aboard of our ship. Our run through the straits of Malacca was not signalized by any remarkable incidents. We saw the shore on either hand at times; passed in sight of the English East India penal settlement, Pulo-Penang, and close aboard of some most lovely tropical islands, anchored at night, and caught some red fish; made lay to, and frightened half to death, the captain of a Malay boat, called a parrigue, who had been manœuvring very suspiciously about nine at night, by firing a couple of muskets at him; and received and returned a salute. This was the English frigate Cleopatra, in tow of an East India Company’s steamer, one day’s run from Singapore. As they neared, the frigate broke stops with an American flag at the fore, and let slip with twenty-one guns. The old Mississippi was not to be caught napping, and although we had to lower away our quarter boats to prevent their injury by the concussion from our large guns, we soon had flying the English ensign at the fore, and replied with twenty-one. It is not the greater part of a century, that an American man-of-war would have been allowed to pass without any such national courtesy being shown by an Englishman. As the two vessels passed under our stern and stood on their way, our band gave them in its best style, “God save the Queen!” At one o’clock in the day we were boarded by a native pilot, who brought from the consul at Singapore a letter-bag for us. It was the first news we had gotten directly, since leaving the United States, then out eighty days, and almost antipodal to our homes, and no one but he who has experienced it can appreciate fully the joy of getting a letter at such a time. It was the first that had come to me away from my own land, and I could have hallooed. In the afternoon we rounded in among some beautiful islands, standing like verdure indexes to the harbor, and soon after anchored in the English free port of Singapore, about two miles from the shore.