8 
VISITS TO MADAGASCAR. 
CIIAP. I. 
on board the fine iron screw steam-ship, “ Indiana,” of 1800 
tons burden; and in the afternoon of the following day, having 
taken in our mails at Plymouth, we stood out to sea. The 
evening became cold and cloudy, but many of my fellow- 
passengers remained on deck until a late hour, watching the 
varied objects of interest on the land, till the shadows of 
evening, spreading over cliff and cove, concealed the shore 
and all beyond it from our view. 
My own thoughts and feelings were very different from 
those with which, in early life, I had, when sailing over the 
same course, looked, as I supposed, for the last time on England 
and all its highly-prized and fondly-cherished associations; 
and I sought afresh to commit myself, and all connected with 
me, to His divine protection whose goodness had been hither¬ 
to so constantly enjoyed. 
The wind in the commencement of our voyage was light, 
but we felt no discouragement on that account, as we found 
by noon on the first day that we had traversed the space of 206 
miles. The breeze soon became more favourable, and for the 
first seven days of our passage we sailed about 240 miles 
each day without the aid of steam; and when the wind 
ceased, we were propelled at about the same rate by steam 
alone. This was my first voyage in an ocean steamer of such 
dimensions; and when the water was tolerably smooth, the en¬ 
gine-room became a place of great attraction to me, where the 
wonderful adjustment of the vast machinery and the exact 
and easy working of the whole, notwithstanding the motion of 
the sea, often excited intense admiration. Our chief engineer, 
an intelligent young Scotchman, told me that when using full 
steam force the engine-fires consumed thirty tons of coal per 
day, that the screw made 3540 revolutions in the hour, that 
each single revolution of the screw propelled our unwieldy iron 
vessel nineteen feet through the water, and that in ordinary 
weather our usual speed was nine or ten miles an hour. Um 
