ther
could not be computed at more than two thousand five hundred men,
if indeed it amounted to so great a number; and was placed under
the command of Major-General Ross, a very gallant and experienced
officer.

The fleet, again, consisted of the Royal Oak, of 74 guns, bearing
the flag of Rear-Admiral Malcolm; the Diadem and Dictator, two
sixty-fours, armed en flute; the Pomone, Menelaus, Trave, Weser,
and Thames, frigates, the three last armed in the same manner as
the Diadem and Dictator; the Meteor and Devastation,
bomb-vessels; together with one or two gun-brigs, making in all a
squadron of eleven or twelve ships of war, with several
storeships and transports.

On board the Royal Oak were embarked the General, with his staff,
and the artillery; the Trave and Weser were filled with the 4th;
the 44th were divided between the Dictator and the Thames, in the
first of which ships were also the engineers; the 85th occupied
the Diadem; and the rest were scattered through the fleet, partly
in the men-of-war and partly in the transports.

As soon as the troops, with all their baggage, were finally
settled in the vessels allotted for their accommodation, the
signal was made to weigh; but the wind being adverse, and the
navigation of the Garonne far from simple, it could not be
obeyed with safety. Every thing, therefore, remained quiet till
the evening of the 2nd of June, when the gale moderating a
little, the anchors were raised and the sails hoisted. The tide
was beginning to ebb when this was done, favoured by which the
ships drifted gradually on their course; but before long, the
breeze shifting, blew directly in their sterns, when they stood
gallantly to sea, clearing the river before dark; and, as there
was no lull during the whole of the night, by daybreak the coast
of France was not to be discerned. All was now one wide waste
of waters, as far as the eye could reach, bounded on every side by
the distant horizon; a scene which, though at first it must
strike with awe and wonder a person unaccustomed to it, soon
becomes insipid, and even wearisome, from its constant sameness.

ST. MICHAEL'S

The fair wind which carried us out of the Garonne continuing to
blow without any interruption till the 19th of June, it was that
day calculated, by consulting the log and taking observations,
that the Azores, or Western Islands, could not be very distant.
Nor, as it turned out, were these calculations incorrect; for, on