Not more surprised by wild visions can the imagined hero of fiction be made to feel on the new territories of romance to which he is introduced, than I have been in looking out upon the diversity, the natural collocation of separate parts, and the mingling features of the tout ensemble presented upon shore.

Individual objects, when made to sustain their place as features of the whole, assume altogether an unexpected character, diverse to all I had painted in fancy's rich domain. What an enchantress Nature is! She sets the pencil, the canvass, and the imagination, at defiance. I muse upon the realities of which I had formed but a partial estimate, and which representations could not convey the feathery cocoa-nut, the tall palm, and the yellow beach, are signals of a land different from all which I have ever seen; of a path in creation new to me—the heritage of a family of mankind whom I have not hitherto seen, but with whom my interests and future responsibilities shall be intimately and inseparably associated.

The appearance of Madras from the roads is imposing and grand. Fort St. George lies upon the margin of the coast, and its walls are washed by the flowing tide. The buildings along the shore have all a stately aspect, and seem rather the palaces of great and wealthy princes, than the habitations of stranger merchants in a foreign land. Bentinck Buildings, of which the supreme court, and other law offices, form but a part, are in the first style of splendour. In the same line is the

custom-house on one side, and the post-office on the other; constituting a range contiguous from the southern point of the fort to the black towngate, with a slight and barely perceptible interval of nearly three miles. The walls of the houses are overlaid with a composition called chunam, susceptible of the highest polish; which, at a distance, when the building is new, is as pure as alabaster, and, by age, acquires the colour of a greyish marble. Madras is situated on an extended plain. A low range of hills, to the north, rises in the distance, extending to the interior; and another line of low mountains, which we have already singled out from Sadras, reaches southward. The former you see to the right, and the other to the left, as you look upon the town from the deck of the ship. Thus the chief objects of attraction are the town and its environs, and especially the European villas. There is all the luxuriance of an eastern clime discoverable in the face of the surrounding country; so that, casting your eye beyond the foaming surf, the low sandy beach, and the city buildings, with their lofty verandahs, columned piazzas, and terraced roofs, the spires of three or four churches, the dome of an Armenian convent, and the crested minarets of the Moslem faith, you fix upon the waving acacia, the sweeping, drooping bamboo, the broad-leaved plantain, the aspiring, tufted palmyra, and the stately and wide-spreading hospitable banian-all wooing the zephyr,, which is scarcely strong enough to excite vibration in the lightest

tendrils, while not a cloud intervenes between them and the clear blue ether in the mid air.

We had no sooner dropped our anchor, than the ship was boarded by-men, they were, but whether their habitation was on land, or in the water, a stranger could hardly decide. We were two miles from the shore, we saw no boat coming along-side, neither was there one on the larboard or starboard. Our visitors were not shaking their black locks as if they had passed through the waters, neither were they wringing their garments-they were in nudibus; yet, more surprising, they handed a document of an official character from the shore to our captain. And who were they, or how could they come there? The sailors called them Catamaran Jacks; men who plough the billows and the raging surf upon two, and sometimes three planks, six or eight feet long, with a short paddle in their hands; they sit on these planks cross-legged or astride, as suits their convenience, striking the water first on one side, and then on the other, with their solitary paddle. These are our first medium of communication with the shores of far-celebrated and long-civilized India! Now all is bustle and preparation, anxiety and anticipation. The sun has gone down the day has closed; and prudence dictates a brief delay. This exercise of patience is necessary, and is yielded to-more of constraint, than of a willing mind.

Another night must be passed on board-then the daylight will be before us. A new country, a strange people, and our

ignorance of both, prescribe the morning as the period of our debarkation. And now, how many mercies should be recorded,-how sincere the gratitude, how devout the praise, how enduring the memorial, here presented, since a thousand opening waves have not swallowed us up; since the storms, with all their fury, have not overwhelmed us; and since all the billows of the mighty deep have not gone over us: but even in the midst of the storm-on the verge of the heaving gulf, the throne of prayer, the ear of a Father, have been accessible, and the fountain of mercy has been open, and the love of God has been shed abroad.

"Now safely moored, my perils o'er,

I'll sing, first in night's diadem,

For ever and for evermore,

The Star, the Star of Bethlehem."

On the morning after we had cast anchor, there was no instance of lethargy on board; our orisons did not remain to be performed by the light of day, and there was no disposition any further to indulge suspense; we felt that with truth might it be said, 'we could not tell what a day would bring forth.' Within the tropics, the grey dawn, that isthmus between day and night, spreads itself over only a brief space of time; but speedily as it passes over,