at my own vessel, when at sea,
from a boat, without wondering at my own folly in seeking such a home.

In the afternoon the breeze sprang up again, and we soon lost sight of our
friends, who were hauling in for the still distant land. All that
afternoon and night we had a fresh and a favourable wind. The next day I
went on deck, while the people were washing the ship. It was Sunday, and
there was a flat calm. The entire scene admirably suited a day of rest.
The Channel was like a mirror, unruffled by a breath of air, and some
twenty or thirty vessels lay scattered about the view, with their sails
festooned and drooping, thrown into as many picturesque positions by the
eddying waters. Our own ship had got close in with the land; so near,
indeed, as to render a horse or a man on the shore distinctly visible. We
were on the coast of Dorsetshire. A range of low cliffs lay directly abeam
of us, and, as the land rose to a ridge behind them, we had a distinct
view of a fair expanse of nearly houseless fields. We had left America
verdant and smiling, but we found England brown and parched, there having
been a long continuance of dry easterly winds.

The cliffs terminated suddenly, a little way ahead of the ship, and the
land retired inward, with a wide sweep, forming a large, though not a very
deep bay, that was bounded by rather low shores. It was under these very
cliffs, on which we were looking with so much pleasure and security, and
at so short a distance, that the well-known and terrible wreck of an
Indiaman occurred, when the master, with his two daughters, and hundreds
of other lives, were lost. The pilot pointed out the precise spot where
that ill-fated vessel went to pieces. But the sea in its anger, and the
sea at rest, are very different powers. The place had no terrors for us.

Ahead of us, near twenty miles distant, lay a high hazy bluff, that was
just visible. This was the western extremity of the Isle of Wight, and the
end of our passage in the Hudson. A sloop of war was pointing her head in
towards this bluff, and all the vessels in sight now began to take new
forms, varying and increasing the picturesque character of the view. We
soon got a light air ourselves, and succeeded in laying the ship's head
off shore, towards which we had been gradually drifting nearer than was
desirable. The wind came fresh and fair about ten, when we directed our
course towards the distant bluff. Everything was again in motion. The