y, snowy, drizzly, foggy,
cold, uncomfortable, villainous weather; or else so hot that the mere
act of breathing is too much for feeble human nature--and this, too,
whether the party is made for sailing, riding, rambling about in the
woods, or even for dancing, or tea-drinking, or whist-playing in a warm,
comfortable room. This is, perhaps, one reason why geographers call our
part of the globe the temperate zone; because all our proposed and
anticipated pleasures, that depend in the slightest possible degree upon
the weather, are sure to be tempered and qualified by some unexpected
botheration on the part of the weather.

The party from the shore accordingly arrived alongside the Orion about
eleven o'clock in the forenoon, without accident by sea or land. The
governor was in high spirits and full regimentals; Madame Governor was
as stately, dignified, and bejewelled, as became a lady of her station
and rank; the two daughters sparkled with gems and fluttered with silks,
thinking of the impression they were to make upon the officers of the
strange ship; the priest, in sacerdotal dignity, and with his weight
giving the boat three streaks heel to starboard, sat hoping some
contingency might take place that would elicit a present from the Yankee
commander; the young officers, but three in number, including, of
course, the military aspirant to the fair Isabella's hand and fortune,
thought of but little or nothing except their pretty persons and dashing
regimentals.

Isabella, who expected no pleasure from this party of pleasure, but the
reverse, as it would compel her to be for some hours in the company of a
man she had so much reason to detest, sat in the stern sheets, with the
fat clergyman directly in front, and forming an impenetrable rampart
against the impertinent gallantries of the coxcomb Gregorio. She wore
no jewels or ornaments, and from her pensive and serious expression of
countenance, might have passed for an Athenian tribute-maiden whom the
annual ship was about to carry to the den of the Minotaur.

An arm-chair of capacious and old-fashioned dimensions, its ponderous
wood-work carefully hidden by the American ensign, the _fly_ of which
was to serve as an envelope for the feet and ancles of the ladies, was
strongly slung and lowered into the stern sheets of the governor's state
barge, a _craft_ containing nearly as much timber as a fishing schooner,
and about as burdensome. Mr. Morton, the first officer of th