sponges at the bottom. Every minute they heave the lead. "By the mark
three." "By the mark three, less a quarter." "By the mark twain and a
half," (fifteen feet, the vessel drawing thirteen,) two feet between us and
the bottom. The sailor sings it out like the first line of a hymn in short
metre, doled out by the parish clerk. I wish Madame A---- were singing it
instead of he. "By the mark three, less a quarter." To this tune, the only
sound breaking the stillness of the night, I dropped to sleep. The captain
passed the night anxiously, now looking out for lights on the Banks, now at
the helm, or himself sounding the lead:

"For some must watch whilst others sleep;
Thus wags the world away."

11th.--Beautiful morning, and fair wind. About eight we left the Banks.
Just then we observed, that the sailor who sounded, having sung out five,
then six, then in a few minutes seven, suddenly found no bottom, as if we
had fallen off all at once from the brink of the Bank into an abyss.

A fellow-captain, and passenger of our captain's, told me this morning,
that he spoke the ship which carried out Governor and Mrs. McLean to
Cape-Coast Castle--the unfortunate L.E.L. It does not seem to me at all
astonishing that the remedies which she took in England without injury,
should have proved fatal to her in that wretched climate.

We have been accompanied all the morning by a fine large ship, going full
sail, the Orleans, Captain Sears, bound for New Orleans.... A long
semicircular line of black rocks in sight; some of a round form, one of
which is called the Death's Head; another of the shape of a turtle, and
some two or three miles long. At the extremity of one of these the English
are building a lighthouse.