im through the perilous way,
We rear a column[382] on the friendly bay.

Our keels, that now had steer'd through many a clime,
By shell-fish roughen'd, and incased with slime,
Joyful we clean, while bleating from the field
The fleecy dams the smiling natives yield:
But while each face an honest welcome shows,
And, big with sprightly hope, each bosom glows,
(Alas! how vain the bloom of human joy!
How soon the blasts of woe that bloom destroy!)
A dread disease its rankling horrors shed,
And death's dire ravage through mine army spread.
Never mine eyes such dreary sight beheld,
Ghastly the mouth and gums enormous swell'd;[383]
And instant, putrid like a dead man's wound,
Poisoned with foetid steams the air around.
No sage physician's ever-watchful zeal,
No skilful surgeon's gentle hand to heal,
Were found: each dreary mournful hour we gave
Some brave companion to a foreign grave.
A grave, the awful gift of every shore!----
Alas! what weary toils with us they bore!
Long, long endear'd by fellowship in woe,
O'er their cold dust we give the tears to flow;
And, in their hapless lot forbode our own,
A foreign burial, and a grave unknown!

Now, deeply yearning o'er our deathful fate,
With joyful hope of India's shore elate,
We loose the hawsers and the sail expand,
And, upward coast the Ethiopian strand.
What danger threaten'd at Quiloa's isle,
Mozambique's treason, and Mombassa's guile:
What miracles kind Heav'n our guardian wrought,
Loud fame already to thine ears has brought:
Kind Heaven again that guardian care display'd,
And, to thy port our weary fleet convey'd,
Where thou, O king, Heaven's regent power below,
Bidd'st thy full bounty and thy truth to flow;
Health to the sick, and to the weary rest,
And sprightly hope reviv'd in every breast,
Proclaim thy gifts, with grateful joy repaid,
The brave man's tribute for the brave man's aid.
And now, in honour of thy fond command,
The glorious annals of my native land;
And what the perils of a route so bold,
So dread as ours, my faithful lips have told.
Then judge, great monarch, if the world before
Ere saw the prow such length of seas explore!
Nor sage Ulysses,[384] nor the Trojan[385] pride
Such raging gulfs, such whirling storms defied;
Nor one poor tenth of my