FROM LONDON TO TAMATAVE. 
11 
expedition, entirely at his own expense, to Mauri¬ 
tius, to observe the transit of Yenus. The party, 
on landing from the yacht, were very much sur¬ 
prised to find a lady's woollen wrapper, evidently 
only lately dropped, and recent footmarks, which 
revealed the presence of fashionable boots at no 
very distant period, upon the sands of a tiny rill 
of pure sweet water, which flowed at the bottom 
of a deep fissure in the rocks; and various were 
the conjectures of the bewildered spectators as to 
how these signs of fashionable female attire could 
have come there. It was clearly the puzzle of 
the “ fly in the amber" repeated; or perhaps, 
nearer still, that of the human footprint which 
so disconcerted the immortal Crusoe. 
Whether the mystery of the fashionable shawl 
left beside the little fountain on this desolate rock 
in mid-ocean was ever solved by the finders we 
cannot say. We should presume not, however, 
as a friend afterwards assured me that a year or 
two ago he had seen the relic of Trinidad pre¬ 
served in a northern museum, where it was 
regarded with considerable interest, not un¬ 
mixed with pathos, as the only remains of some 
unfortunate victims of the unknown terrors of 
the deep. We may say, however, that the shawl 
had been left behind and forgotten by one of the 
ladies of our party. 
The long passage by the Cape to Tamatave has 
