s alone he was brought in sight
of us. Not to dwell on the unexpected, but not unimportant facts of the
flames having been mercifully prevented, for eleven hours, from either
communicating with the magazine forward, or the great spirit room abaft,
or even coming into contact with the tiller ropes--any of which
circumstances would evidently have been fatal,--I would remark that,
until the _Cambria_ hove in sight, we had not discovered any vessel
whatever for several days previous; nor did we afterwards see another
until we entered the chops of the Channel. It is to be remembered, too,
that had the _Cambria_, with her small crew, been homeward instead of
outward bound, her scanty remainder of provisions, under such
circumstances, would hardly have sufficed to form a single meal for our
vast assemblage; or if, instead of having her lower deck completely
clear, she had been carrying out a full cargo, there would not have been
time, under the pressure of the danger and the violence of the gale, to
throw the cargo overboard, and certainly, with it, not sufficient space
in the brig to contain one-half of our number.

When I reflect, besides, on the disastrous consequences that must have
followed if, during our passage home, which was performed in a period
most unusually short, the wind had either veered round a few points, or
even partially subsided--which must have produced a scene of horror on
board more terrible if possible than that from which we had escaped; and
above all, when I recollect the extraordinary fact, and that which seems
to have the most forcibly struck the whole of us, that we had not been
above an hour in Falmouth harbour, when the wind, which had all along
been blowing from the south-west, suddenly chopped round to the opposite
quarter of the compass, and continued uninterruptedly for several days
afterwards to blow strongly from the north-east,--one cannot help
concluding that he who sees nothing of a Divine Providence in our
preservation must be lamentably and wilfully blind to "the majesty of
the Lord."

In the course of the morning we all prepared, with thankful and joyful
hearts, to place our feet on the shores of Old England.

The ladies, always destined to form our vanguard, were the first to
disembark, and were met on the beach by immense crowds of the
inhabitants, who appeared to have been attracted thither less by idle
curiosity than from the sincerest desire to alleviate in every possible
man