t and impressive
discourse. It was a calm, beautiful Sabbath, a sweet tranquillity
enshrouding everything. The ship glided over the gently throbbing breast
of the Arabian Sea with scarcely perceptible motion; and when night
came, the stillness yet unbroken, save by the pulsation of the great
motive power hidden in the dark hull of the Kashgar, the bishop
delivered a lecture on astronomy. He stood on the quarter-deck,
bare-headed, his snow-white hair crowning a brow radiant with intellect,
while the attentive passengers were seated around, and over his head
glowed the wondrous orbs of which he discoursed. Naturally eloquent, the
speaker seemed inspired by the peculiar surroundings, as he pointed out
and dilated upon the glorious constellations and planets blazing in the
blue vault above us. He explained the immensity of these individual
worlds, the harmonious system which science shows to exist in their
several spheres, the almost incalculable distance between them, as
related to each other and as it regarded this earth. The sun, the moon,
and the rotation of the globe, all were learnedly expatiated upon, and
yet in language so eloquent and simple as to inform the least
intelligent of his listeners. Finally, in his peroration, in touchingly
beautiful language, he ascribed the power, the glory, and the harmony of
all to that Almighty Being who is the Parent of our race.

The good ship held steadily on her southwest course, day after day,
lightly fanned by the northeast monsoon towards the mouth of the Red
Sea. Our time was passed in reading aloud to each other, and in
rehearsing the experience of the last six months. We were very dreamy,
very idle, but it was sacred idleness, full of pleasant thoughts, and
half-waking visions induced by tropical languor, full of gratitude for
life and being amid such tranquillity, and beneath skies so glowing with
beauty and loveliness. At the end of the sixth day we cast anchor at the
island, or rather peninsula, of Aden, a rocky, isolated spot held by
English troops, to command the entrance to the Red Sea,--very properly
called the Gibraltar of the Indian Ocean. Like that famous promontory it
was originally little more than a barren rock,--pumice-stone and
lava,--which has been improved into a picturesque and habitable place,
bristling with one hundred British cannon of heavy calibre. It is a spot
much dreaded by sailors, the straits being half closed by sunken rocks,
besides which the