chap. m. 
ARRIVAL OF SHIPWRECKED PASSENGERS. 
63 
its owner a prize, and he perhaps felt as rich, and found as 
much satisfaction in the award, as an English amateur would 
do who had successfully exhibited in London a saccolabium 
or a vanda from Nepal or Calcutta. This exhibition was 
quite a fete day for the higher classes. A band attended. 
The acting Governor, General Sutherland, and his lady, to¬ 
gether with his suite, came during the afternoon; a number 
of military and naval officers were present; and for some 
time the several avenues around the flowers—the most at¬ 
tractive objects — were literally thronged with company, pre¬ 
senting, in this respect, on a smaller scale, a similar scene to 
the gatherings on an English exhibition day at Chiswick or 
the Eegent’s Park. 
The Sechelles, from which some of the most beautiful 
fabrications exhibited had been brought, comprise a number 
of low islands to the northward of Mauritius, which often 
prove dangerous to vessels navigating that part of the Indian 
Ocean. Two wrecks had recently occurred amongst them. 
On the 26th of September the crew and passengers of an 
English vessel wrecked on the solitary island of Amsterdam, 
arrived at Port Louis under circumstances which excited 
very deep and general sympathy. The “ Meridian,” a fine 
new ship of nearly 600 tons’ burden, with a valuable cargo, 
and eighty-four passengers, making, with the crew, 108 souls, 
sailed from England on the 4th of June, and on the evening 
of the 24th of August struck on the rocks on the south-west 
point of Amsterdam, the smallest of two solitary, uninhabited, 
and rocky islands, situated in the Southern Ocean, midway 
between the Cape of Good Hope and New Holland, and often 
sighted by outward-bound ships to India. On the first shock 
the captain had rushed on deck, and was almost immediately 
washed overboard and drowned, as were also the cook and 
one passenger. The force of the sea was so great, that soon 
after midnight the mainmast fell over the side of the vessel, 
