s, and
uncertain. What I have ventured to write is, I trust, correct as to
facts and dates; it is merely intended as an introduction, without
which, the journal of what passed while I was in Brazil would be
scarcely intelligible.

[Illustration]

JOURNAL.

At about six o'clock in the evening of the 31st of July, 1821, after
having saluted His Majesty, George IV., who at that moment went on board
the Royal George yacht, to proceed to Dublin,--we sailed in the Doris, a
42 gun frigate, for South America. After touching at Plymouth, and
revisiting all the wonders of the break-water and new watering place, we
sailed afresh, but when off Ushant, were driven back to Falmouth by a
heavy gale of wind. There we remained till the 11th of August, when,
with colours half-mast high, on account of the death of Queen Caroline,
we finally left the channel, and on the 18th about noon came in sight of
Porto Santo.

We passed it on the side where the town founded by Don Henry of
Portugal, on the first discovery of the island, is situated, and
regretted much that it was too late in the day to go in very near it.
The land is high and rocky, but near the town there is a good deal of
verdure, and higher up on the land, extensive woods; a considerable
quantity of wine is made there, which, being a little manufactured at
Funchal, passes for true Madeira. As usual in Portuguese colonial towns,
the church and convent are very conspicuous. When we passed Porto Santo,
and the Desertas, and anchored in Funchal roads, I was disappointed at
the calmness of my own feelings, looking at these distant islands with
as little emotion as if I had passed a headland in the channel. Well do
I remember, when I first saw Funchal twelve years ago, the joyous
eagerness with which I feasted my eyes upon the first foreign country I
had ever approached, the curiosity to see every stone and tree of the
new land, which kept my spirits in a kind of happy fever.

"Sweet Memory, wafted by thy gentle gale,
Oft up the stream of time I turn my sail,
To view the fairy haunts of long lost hours,
Blest with far greener shades, far fresher flow'rs." ROGERS.

Now I look on them tamely, or at best only as parts of the lovely
landscape, which, just at sunset, the time we anchored, was particularly
beautiful. Surely the few years added to my age have not done this? May
I not rather hope, that having seen lands whose monuments are all
history, and whose