, but offered to go as second.
But our brave little H---- said, no: 'The owners wished Mr. O---- to
be chief mate, and chief mate he should be.' So he carried the day,
signed as chief and acts as second. Shakespeare and Byron are his
favourite books. I walked into Byron a little, but can well understand
his stirring up a rough, young sailor's romance. I lent him 'Westward
Ho!' from the cabin; but to my astonishment he did not care much for
it; he said it smelt of the shilling railway library; perhaps I had
praised it too highly. Scott is his standard for novels. I am very
happy to find good taste by no means confined to gentlemen, H----
having no pretensions to that title. He is a man after my own heart.

"Then I came down to the cabin and heard young A----'s schemes for the
future. His highest picture is a commission in the Prince of
Vizianagram's irregular horse. His eldest brother is tutor to his
Highness's children, and grand vizier, and magistrate, and on his
Highness's household staff, and seems to be one of those Scotch
adventurers one meets with and hears of in queer berths--raising
cavalry, building palaces, and using some petty Eastern king's long
purse with their long Scotch heads.

"_Off Bona, June 4._

"I read your letter carefully, leaning back in a Maltese boat to
present the smallest surface of my body to a grilling sun, and sailing
from the _Elba_ to Cape Hamrah, about three miles distant. How we
fried and sighed! At last we reached land under Fort Geneva, and I was
carried ashore pick-a-back, and plucked the first flower I saw for
Annie. It was a strange scene, far more novel than I had imagined; the
high, steep banks covered with rich, spicy vegetation, of which I
hardly knew one plant. The dwarf palm with fan-like leaves, growing
about two feet high, formed the staple of the verdure. As we brushed
through them, the gummy leaves of a cistus stuck to the clothes: and
with its small white flower and yellow heart stood for our English
dog-rose. In place of heather, we had myrtle and lentisque with leaves
somewhat similar. That large bulb with long flat leaves? Do not touch
it if your hands are cut; the Arabs use it as blisters for their
horses. Is that the same sort? No, take that one up; it is the bulb of
a dwarf palm, each layer of the onion peels off, brown and netted,
like the outside of a cocoa-nut. It is a clever plant th