200 



Thus we continued in a state of listless apathy for some weeks, 

 when after stealing gently on with a faint land breeze during the 

 night, we were agreeably surprized one morning at day-break with 

 the appearance of a vessel at a few miles distance. Pleased with 

 the novelty, we dispatched a boat, and found her to be a French 

 ship from Mauritius, bound to FOrient, which had already been 

 a month in these latitudes, amid calms, contrary winds, and south- 

 erly currents. We kept company many days, and frequently dining 

 with each other, diverted our ennui; for,notwithstanding their misfor- 

 tunes, the French captain and passengers were cheerful and volatile. 



Among a variety offish on the coast of Guinea, the most beau- 

 tiful is the Medusa, or Portugueze man-of-war, which enlivened the 

 surface of the ocean, sailing by thousands before the wind. It 

 appears individually like a large bubble or inflated bladder, per- 

 fectly transparent, and varying with tiic most lovely tints of blue, 

 pink, and violet; it is generally of an oval shape, two or three 

 inches long, with a protuberance at each end, something like a 

 bird's head and beak. I could never discover eyes, nose, or 

 mouth, yet it certainly belongs to the tribe of fishes, with a carti- 

 laginous body, assuming different shapes as it is more or less in- 

 flated. On the top of the body it spreads a pink transparent 

 sail, supported by delicate fibres, which enable it to raise or lower 

 the sail at pleasure; with this they scud away before the lio-ht 

 breezes, but are seldom seen in a boisterous sea; under the body 

 are suspended several filaments of the most beautiful blue, of un- 

 equal length, and always in the water. These appendages are of 

 a pungent caustic quality, and wherever they touch the skin it 

 rises in blisters like a bum, followed by acute pain. 



