FROM LONDON TO TAMATAVE. 
3 
casks of molasses and strong rum. On this occa¬ 
sion she was freighted out with a general cargo, 
consisting of machinery, Manchester goods, and 
stores for the English colony at the capital of 
Madagascar; and amongst the passengers were 
a bishop and his family, some half-dozen mis¬ 
sionaries and school teachers, and other per¬ 
sons, whose homes and avocations were in the far 
East. 
The passage was long—nearly one hundred 
days—and uneventful. 
The usual excitement of the first whale, the 
first shark, and the incessant exercise of the 
gentle craft with hook and line over the stern- 
rail in fine weather, and books, journals, im¬ 
promptu concerts or entertainments in the saloon 
in times of storm, or on disagreeable nights, 
helped to make a very commonplace voyage a 
little less monotonous. But life on board a sail¬ 
ing-ship after the thirtieth day must be a little 
wearying; and having crossed the line, and obedi¬ 
ently, if not gracefully, submitted to the ancient 
and somewhat tyrannical and overbearing de¬ 
mands and usages of the court of Neptune, at this 
particular point of our progress we hailed with 
delight the offer of our genial captain to give us 
a days ramble upon the rocky, and, as we after¬ 
wards found, not at all cheerful island of Trinidad, 
in the South Atlantic. The sensation of feeling 
