springs and the gales which have hitherto accompanied them are safely passed, I cannot foresee any difficulty whatever in the way of completing the protection I propose. Of course, in all works dependent upon wind, weather, and tides, certainty cannot be obtained; but of one thing I am quite certain, that no other plan offers the same chance of success, or at so small a cost. I have communicated to Captain Claxton the steps which I took, in conjunction with Captain Hosken, for procuring the fagots before I left Dundrum; I have also communicated to him the directions which I gave with respect to the engines, &c., and it is unnecessary therefore that I should repeat them. I will only recapitulate in a few words the substance of the advice I have above given, and of my reasoning. You have a valuable piece of property lying on a most exposed shore; if preserved for a few months that property will in all probability be worth 40,000_l._ or 50,000_l._; if neglected for a few weeks longer it will probably be worth nothing. Can you, as men of business, under such circumstances, waste your time at this moment in discussing what you will do in three months hence, and what plan you will then adopt to take your property to market, but will you not rather first and immediately adopt decisive steps for preserving that property, and then consider what you had best do with it? I have no wish to escape the responsibility of advising you, as you request me to do so, as to my opinion of the best plan to be adopted hereafter for removing the ship; but adhering to the principle that I have laid down, I should decline to do so at present, did I not see reason to fear that you might be losing time and money by relying upon expectations which I am convinced would be disappointed. I would strongly urge upon you not to place your reliance upon any plan which depends upon floating the vessel by camels, and taking her to sea unrepaired, and therefore entirely dependent upon those camels. The immense breadth of these floating camels, and the risk of taking such an unmanageable floating ill-connected mass to sea, cannot have been correctly or sufficiently estimated; and the certainty of the whole going to the bottom, in the event of even a very moderate gale of wind or a slight swell, has been apparently quite lost sight of. I am also of opinion that the difficulty of lifting the vessel at all by auxiliary floats has been underrated. The vessel has worked herself about 5 or 6 feet into the solid rock and sand, and may very probably get a little deeper before the time for lifting arrives. She must therefore be lifted, say at least 4 feet to 4 feet 6 inches, before she could be got out of the dock she has made; and