i70 FEJEE ISLANDS, 



and Henry. The following portions of it may be interest- 

 ing:— 



Lieutenant Joseph A. Underwood, was born July 15th, 

 1811. He entered the Navy of the United States in 1829, 

 and since that time had been almost constantly employed in 

 active service. He was one of the officers earliest attached to 

 the expedition in which we are embarked, and had been nearly 

 four years connected with it, at the time of his decease. With 

 some of you, he encountered the dangers and hardships inci- 

 dent to a passage round the stormy Cape and of Noir Island ; 

 saw and endured with manly exposure the more appalling 

 prospect that tried men's souls. For a year previous to his 

 death, with us who survive, he shared the risks in the ship, in 

 the boat, and on shore, peculiar to a passage among the reefs 

 and islets that thickly stud this southern sea. With health 

 unbroken, he sustained the blighting heat and piercing cold of 

 the torrid and the frigid zones, as we passed rapidly from 

 clime to clime. He bore unmoved, the arduous toils, priva- 

 tions, and perils of our southern cruise, when, amid the ice- 

 islands of the Polar Ocean, we threaded our devious and 

 often dangerous way. With us he visited these barbarous 

 islands, and had been repeatedly engaged in the arduous and 

 perilous duty in which he met his melancholy and untimely 

 fate. Our lamented friend had been married but a few weeks, 

 when he left his native land, and had completed his twenty- 

 ninth year, only two days previous to his leaving the ship for 

 the last time. While I recognize the charitable sentiment — 

 " Nought of the dead, but good," I am happy to assure you, 

 that in relation to our departed friends, it will be in perfect 

 accordance with that sentiment to say, " Nought of the dead 

 but truth." With the Roman orator, I can say, I come to 

 bury our fallen friends, not to praise them. And if a year's 



