346 ISLES OF StJMMEE. 



The early Sabbath morn found a large number of onr fellow 

 voyagers intently scanning the eastern horizon from the good 

 ship's upper deck. The usual speculations, inseparable from 

 such an occasion, as to the time when we would reach our haren 

 of rest, afforded fit material for the interchange of thought and 

 a comparison of views. It was a subject in which all were deeply 

 interested, but the weather had been so fine, and the voyage so 

 pleasant, that we felt that in landing we should only exchange 

 one form of happiness for another. Our ship was new, scrupu- 

 lously neat and clean, staunch and steady, admirably officered 

 and manned, and all its appointments were decidedly first-class, 

 so that a sentiment akin to that which one entertains for a beau- 

 tiful, spirited and intelligent horse, that has carried him safely 

 and ministered to his happiness, sprang up and took firm root 

 in the minds of the fortunate passengers in reference to the 

 Steam Screw Ship Western Texas. The Texas we felt was our 

 ship, and to it we seemed to owe a kind of fealty and true alle- 

 giance. 



As the morning wore away, our passenger captain, with his 

 trained, long-sighted sea-eyes, detected a faint trace of curling 

 smoke upon the background of delicate low clouds rising from 

 the eastern horizon. This, he assured us, was smoke from a fire 

 on the island of New Providence. Soon after, his telescopic eyes 

 discerned in a white, perpendicular line, about as big around as 

 a spider's thread, the coralline lighthouse at the eastern end of 

 Hog Island, at the entrance of Nassau harbor. Very soon the 

 less visually gifted were able to verify assertions which, to their 

 more narrow -vision, seemed to be prophetic — and their faith was 

 soon supplemented by actual knowledge. Thus is it often with 

 hidden truths and mysteries profound! 



Between 9 and 10 o'clock in the forenoon we crossed the bar, 

 and once more revelled in the picturesque beauty of the winding 



