eastward, swept the bottle utterly beyond Mozambique influence,
and left it in the embrace of a current which flowed northward toward
the equator.

Thus the bottle narrowly missed being flung on "India's coral strand,"
and voyaged slowly northward in a line parallel with that coast where
"Afric's sunny fountains roll down their golden sands,"--where slavers,
too, carried off the blacks in days happily gone by, to toil in slavery
among the fields of cotton and sugar-cane, and where British cruisers
did their best, (but that wasn't much!) to prevent the brutal traffic.

The chief point of interest in this part of the voyage was touching at
Saint Helena, touching so sharply on the western promontory of that
dreary islet, that the bottle again nearly made ship-wreck.

Admirably well chosen was this prominent, barren, isolated rock to be
the prison of "Napoleon the Great," for he was a conspicuous, isolated
specimen of humanity, barren of those qualities that constitute real
greatness. Great he undoubtedly was in the art of shedding human blood
and desolating myriads of hearths and hearts without any object whatever
beyond personal ambition; for the First Napoleon being a Corsican, could
not even urge the shallow plea of patriotism in justification of his
murderous career.

So, let the bottle pass! Its career has not been more deadly,
perchance, than was his during the time that the earth was scourged with
his presence!

On reaching the hot region of the equator, our little craft was again
sadly knocked about by conflicting currents, and performed one or two
deep-sea voyages in company with currents which dived a good deal in
consequence of their superior density and inferior heat. At one time it
seemed as if it would be caught by the drift which flows down the east
coast of South America, and thus get back into the seas from which it
set out.

But this was not to be. Owing to some cause which is utterly beyond the
ken of mortals, the bottle at last got fairly into the great equatorial
current which flows westward from the Gulf of Guinea. It reached the
north-west corner of South America, and progressing now at a more rapid
and steady rate, progressed along the northern shore of that continent--
passed the mouth of the mighty Amazon and the Orinoco, and, pushing its
way among the West India Islands, crossed the Carribean Sea, sighted the
Isthmus of Darien, coasted the Bay of Honduras, and swept round the Gulf
of