ts, there
is not much society. A pretty little luncheon and a pleasant hour's
chat in a cool, shady drawing-room, with plenty of new books and music
and flowers, gave me an agreeable impression to carry back on board
the ship; which, by the way, seemed strangely silent and deserted when
we returned, for most of our fellow-passengers had disembarked here on
their way to different parts of the interior.

As I saunter up and down the clean, smart-looking deck of what has
been our pleasant floating home during these past four weeks, I
suddenly perceive a short, squat pyramid on the shore, standing out
oddly enough among the low-roofed houses. If it had only been red
instead of gray, it might have passed for the model of the label on
Bass's beer--bottles; but, even as it is, I feel convinced that there
is a story connected with it: and so it proves, for this ugly, most
unsentimental-looking bit of masonry was built long ago by a former
governor as a record of the virtues and perfections of his dead wife,
whom, among other lavish epithets of praise, he declares to have been
"the most perfect of women." Anyhow, there it stands, on what was once
a lonely strip of sand and sea, a memorial--if one can only believe
the stone story, now nearly a hundred years old--of a great love and a
great sorrow; and one can envy the one and pity the other just as much
when looking at this queer, unsightly monument as when one stands
on the pure marble threshold of the exquisite Taj Mahal at Agra, and
reads that it too, in all its grace and beauty, was reared "in memory
of an undying love."

Although the day has been warm and balmy, the evening air strikes
chill and raw, and our last evening on board the dear old ship has to
be spent under shelter, for it is too cold to sit on deck. With the
first hours of daylight next morning we have to be up and packing, for
by ten o'clock we must be on board the Florence, a small, yacht-like
coasting-steamer which can go much closer into the sand-blocked
harbors scooped by the action of the rivers all along the coast. It is
with a very heavy heart that I, for one, say good-bye to the Edinburgh
Castle, where I have passed so many happy hours and made some pleasant
acquaintances. A ship is a very forcing-house of friendship, and no
one who has not taken a voyage can realize how rapidly an acquaintance
grows and ripens into a friend under the lonely influences of sea
and sky. We have all been so happy togethe