prey. He did not even flap his wings, and seemed unconscious of pain, so suddenly and so completely did he lose his breath.

I can seldom bring myself to a willingness to destroy the life of a bird, or other animal, merely for my own pleasure of preserving him to fill a niche in a private museum. And I admire that delicacy of feeling which caused a gentleman of my acquaintance, on perceiving a serpent endeavoring to devour a toad, to alight from his carriage, and separate them-giving each a switching, and sending them about their business. But on board of ship, the birds which alight upon her spars and rigging, are generally so far spent that they do not recover, and will not eat or drink. The same day a pretty little swallow was brought to me, and with a desire to cherish its life I placed it in one of the side lanterns of the ship, with the intention of bearing it nearer to the land, that it might find its way back again to its green bowers and sylvan tents. But it died during the night. This was also the sad fate of the pretty bird that came aboard of us at the leeward of the Isle of France; and all my kind desires that it might reach its green land-home again, failed of their gratification. It died, as I watched its last pulsations, on my handkerchief. And though my sympathies could avail it nothing, the incident bore me many leagues over the seas, where I remembered to have seen a sweet young lady, sitting in pensive mood, with her long dark eyelashes nearly closed, as her neck, with a gentle curve, bent to gaze on her pretty canary, which lay imbedded on her rich laced handkerchief, and was dying. Each pulsation of its yellow plumed bosom was watched with a languishing air of sentiment, as the little sleeper lay in her lap; and when the last beat of its heart had stopped, and the convulsed wings extended themselves, and its delicate feet contracted, and all then was over, one long sigh swelled that young lady's bosom, and a tear filled her abstracted eye. Who will say that such a tear was ill-spent over the death of that beautiful little bird?

There was a beautiful eclipse of the moon this evening, October 3d, and we were every way favorably situated to observe it, in the Arabian sea. The night was clear,

and the sea smooth, while we were gliding on our course, with our sails sufficiently filled to keep the ship steady. The air was mild and delightful. The officer of the

deck sent for me; and when I reached the upper deck, the earth's shadow had already covered ten digits of the moon's disk. The heavens were lighted by the bright stars, now streaming in their greatest brilliance from out an Indian heaven, while the northern edge of the moon gleamed in its narrow strip of light, only to render the gloom beneath her on the ocean yet more sickly and drear, while the stars above and around lay in their loveliness, deep in their dark concave above us.

Even philosophers are sometimes so much the things of habit in their associations, that we had not bethought ourselves that an eclipse, invisible in the United States, would be in full view to the eye that gazed at it in the Indian seas. It was a beautiful sight, however, as presented to our observation. The gorgeous queen seemed to have taken the whim of a quakeress to-night, in her attire of the light dun of her gossamer dress. I contemplated her changes with interest, first with the naked eye, then through the common night-glass, afterwards through a larger inverted telescope, which exhibited her appearances yet more interesting, in her contrasts of colors. The shadow exhibited the appearance of the richest amber; and the brilliant stream of light, that gleamed in a small line on the northern rim, as it increased its field while the shadow receded, presented an area resembling a surface of purest snow, reflecting back a flood of light in contrast with the amber of the shadow.

We envied our friends on the 18th of the last month, the opportunity of gazing at the annular eclipse of the sun. No evidence of a frown gathering over his face, appeared to us. And the privilege we enjoyed in contemplating the scene of to-night, from the mid-ocean, might justly excite their envy towards us, could friends, in their kindness of heart, ever indulge such a feeling towards those of their number when far away, for the occasional pleasures which come across their course.

A LAZY SHIP WAKING AGAIN TO LIFE.

Our ship has been sleeping for some fortnight and more in the calm waters of the Arabian seas, as if she, like the rest of us, had become unnerved by the relaxing heat of these latitudes. We have made but little progress, from day to day. The sea has presented, often, an unruffled bosom. Around us occasionally, the thousand colored and beautiful dolphins have been seen, and the rudder-fish adhering, as if it were life and death with him, to the course of the ship. The waters in these seas are remarkably phosphorescent. At night, a sponge, dipped into a bucket freshly filled from the sea, will become bespangled entirely with the brilliant phosphorescent points, giving forth their light from a thousand small globules, that coat the surface to which they adhere. And when the water is dashed upon the deck these thousand little brilliants cover the moistened space. But when a light is brought to observe the animalcules themselves, which are supposed to give forth these phosphorescent appearances, not one can be detected. At least, on several occasions I have made the examination with others, and without success; though these illuminated particles are perfectly perceptible to the eye in the dark, and on placing your finger upon them, as they adhere to any surface, they give forth a brighter illumination, and can be suf fused over a larger space by compression, as a small particle of glutinous matter would extend itself when the finger was drawn, with a pressure, over it. I can imagine that these seas should sometimes exhibit one unbroken sheet of phosphorescent light, as it has been affirmed of them, as seen in some instances. And on one evening, as our vessel was gliding gently through the water, which was undulating with an unbroken surface, the dark sea near us seemed but a counterpart of the bespangled arch above us, as we looked into the deep concave below, illuminated by a thousand points of these phosphorescent and twinkling globules, which the imagination placed as far off and beneath us as the orbs that gleamed in their distant and far-off halls above us.

For several days have we been gliding through such a sea, lazily indeed, and where alone we have, during our voyage, seen the expanded bosom of the ocean exhibit its vast surface as a mirror in its smoothness and reflecting powers. But to-day our courser has aroused herself, and seems moving with awakened speed on her way, as if she had again come to her remembrance that there was something to be done, and dreaming was not always to be indulged in by one who bears a nation's messages and commission around the world.

SECTION VII.

MUSCAT.

Off Muscat. Night signals. First view of Muscat. Title of Imâm. Visit of the Commodore to the Imâm. Commodore Read's letter to his Highness. Letter and lines from the Author to the Sultan. Also letter to the young Imam. Note of Syed Bin Calfaun. The burial of a seaman at Muscat. Author's visit to Captain Calfaun. Sentiment of the Sultan as it respects the residence of Missionaries. The Sultan's horses. Visit of the young Sultan to the frigate. Camp of the Bedouin Arabs. Banyans. Bedouin Chief. Captain Syed Bin Calfaun. Generosity of the Sultan of Muscat. Syed Syeed Bin Soultan's family.

THIS morning, October 18th, we find ourselves off Muscat, the wished-for port, for which we have been steering over a long track of water since we left Rio de Janeiro. We have been eighty days at sea since we left the South American coast. Last night we deemed ourselves within a few miles of the harbor, and with all our studding-sails set, endeavored to press the ship up to a point, at which, as we rounded it, we expected we should discover the harbor. But the sun delayed not on his declining course, and lost himself behind the serrated range of hills of the Arabian coast, along which we had been standing during the day, before we could weather the low and elongated bluff. As the sun declined beyond the cragged highland, he still