st last; took the route of most other ships which had preceded her,
anchoring at Rio de Janeiro on the 18th of October, whence she sailed on
the 22nd of the same month, and made Van Dieman's Land on the 9th
instant, her passage occupying something more than five months.

We found that a ship (the _Marquis Cornwallis_) had sailed for Cork to
take in her convicts three weeks before the _Ceres_ left England; and that
it was reported at Rio de Janeiro, that the Cape of Good Hope was in our
possession.

The _Ceres_, touching at the island of Amsterdam in her way hither, took
off four men, two French and two English, who had lived there three
years, having been left from a brig (the _Emilia_), which was taken on to
China by the _Lion_ man of war. One of the Frenchmen, M. Perron,
apparently deserved a better kind of society than his companions
supplied. He had kept an accurate and neatly-written journal of his
proceedings, with some well-drawn views of the spot to which he was so
long confined. It appeared that they had, in the hope of their own or
some other vessel arriving to take them off, collected and cured several
thousands of seal-skins, which, however, they were compelled to abandon.
M. Perron had subsisted for the last eighteen months on the flesh of seals.

On the day following this arrival the signal was again made; and before
noon the snow _Experiment_, commanded by Mr. Edward McClellan, who was
here in the same vessel in the year before last, from Bengal, and the
ship _Otter_, Mr. Ebenezer Dorr master, from Boston in North America,
anchored in the cove.

Mr. McClellan had on board a large investment of India goods, muslins,
calicoes, chintzes, soap, sugar, spirits, and a variety of small
articles, apparently the sweepings of a Bengal bazar; the sale of which
investment he expected would produce ten or twelve thousand pounds.

The American, either finding the market overstocked, or having had some
other motive for touching here, declared he had nothing for sale; but
that he could, as a favour, spare two hogsheads of Jamaica rum, three
pipes of Madeira, sixty-eight quarter casks of Lisbon wine, four chests
and a half of Bohea tea, and two hogsheads of molasses. He had touched at
the late residence of M. Perron, the island of Amsterdam, and brought off
as many of the sealskins (his vessel being bound to China after visiting
the north-west coast of America) as he could take on board. He had been
five months and th