fairly into he harbor, notwithstanding the obscurity, by watching the sound of these guns, and attending closely to the depth of

water.

I never was in any ship which ventured upon this feat, but I perfectly recollect a curious circumstance, which occured, I think, to his majesty's ship Cambrian. She had run in from sea towards he coast, enveloped in one of these dense fogs. Of course they took for granted that the light-house and the adjacent land Halafax included were likewise covered with an impenetrable cloud or mist. But it so chanced, by what freak of Dame Nature, I know not, that the fog, on that day, was confined to the deep water, so that we who were in the port, could see it at the distance of several miles from the coast lying on the ocean like a huge stratum of snow, with an abrupt face fronting the shore. The Cambrian, lost in the midst of this fog bank, supposing herself to be near the land, fired a gun. To this the light-house replied; and so the ship and the light went on pelting away, gun for gun. during half the day without ever seeing one another. The people at the light-house had no means of communicating to the frigate that, if she could only stand on a little further, she would disentangle herself from the cloud, in which, like Jupiter Olympus of old she was wasting her thunder.

At last the captain, hopeless of its clearing up, gave orders to pipe to dinner; but as the weather, in all respects except this abominable haze, was quite fine, and the ship was still in deep water, he directed her to be steered towards the shore, and the lead kept constantly going. As one o'clock approached, he began to feel uneasy, from the water shoaling, and the light-house guns sounding closer and closer; but, being unwilling to disturb the men at dinner, he resolved to stand on for the remaining ten minutes of the hour. Lo and behold! however, they had not sailed half a mile further before the flying jib-boon end emerged from the wall of mist―then the bowsprit shot into day light-and, lastly the ship herself, glided out of the cloud into the full blaze of a bright and "sunshine holy day." All hands were instantly turned up to make sail; and the men, as they flew on deck, could scarcely believe their senses, when they saw behind them the fog bank, and right ahead the harbor's mouth, with the bold cliffs of Cape Sambro on the left, and, farther still, the ships at their moorings, with their ensign and pendants blowing out, light and dry in the breeze.

A far different fate, alas! attended his Majesty's ship Atalante, Captain Frederic Hickey. On the morning of the 10th of No"ember, 1813, this ship stood in for Halifax harbor in very thick weather, carefully feeling her way with the lead, and having look-out men at the jib-boom-end, fore-yard-arms, and every where else from which a glimpse of land was likely to be obtained. Afer breakfast a fog signal gun was fired, in expectation of its being

answered by the light-house on Cape Sambro, near which it wa known they must be. Within a few minutes, accordingly, a gun was heard in the north-north-west quarter, exactly where the light was supposed to lie. As the soundings agreed with the estimated position of the ship, and as the guns from the Atalante, fired at intervals of fifteen minutes, were regularly answered in the direction of the harbor's mouth, it was determined to stand on so as to enter the port under the guidance of these sounds alone. By a fatal coincidence of circumstances, however, these answering guns · were fired not by Cape Sambro, but by his Majesty's ship Barrossa, which was likewise entangled by the fog. She, too, supposed that she was communicating with the light-house, whereas it was the guns of the unfortunate Atalante that she heard all the time.

There was certainly no inconsiderable risk incurred by running in for the harbor's mouth under such circumstances. But it will often happen that it becomes the officer's duty to put his ship as well as his life in hazard; and this appears to have been exactly one of those cases. Captain Hickey was charged with urgent despatches relative to the enemy's fleet, which it was of the greatest importance should be delivered without an hour's delay. But there was every appearance of this fog lasting a week; and as he and his officers had passed over the ground a hundred times before, and were as intimately acquainted with the spot as any pilot could be, it was resolved to try the bold' experiment; and the ship was forthwith steered in the supposed direction of Halifax.

They had not, however, stood on far, before one of the lookout men exclaimed, “breakers ahead! Hard a-starboard!" But it was too late, for, before the helm could be put over, the ship was amongst those formidable reefs known by the name of the sisters' rocks, or eastern ledge of Sambro Island. The rudder and half of the sternpost, together with the greater part of the false keel, were driven off by the first blow and floated up along side. There is some reason to believe, indeed, that a portion of the bottom of the ship, loaded with one hundred and twenty tons of iron ballast, * were torn from the upper works by this fearful blow, and that the ship, which instantly filled with water, was afterwards buoyed up merely by the empty casks, till the decks and sides burst through or were riven asunder by the waves.

The captain who, throughout the whole scene, continued as composed as if nothing remarkable had occurred, now ordered the guns to be thrown overboard, but before one of them could be cast loose, or a breaching cut, the ship fell over so much that the men could not stand. It was, therefore, with great difficulty that a few guns were fired as signals of distress. In the same breath that this order was given, Captain Hickey desired the yard tackles to be hooked, in order that the pinnace might be hoisted out; but as the masts, deprived of their foundation, were tottering from

The quarter

side to side, the people were called down again. boats were then lowered into the water with some difficulty, but the jolly boat, which happened to be on the poop undergoing repairs, in being launched overboard, struck against one of the stern davits, bilged, and went down. The ship was now falling fast over on her beam ends, and directions were given to cut away her fore and main mast. Fortunately, they fell without injuring the large boat on the booms-their grand hope. At the instant of this crash, the ship parted in two between the main and mizen-masts; and, within a few seconds afterwards, she again broke right across, between the fore and main-masts: so that the poor Atalante now formed a mere wreck, divided into three pieces, crumbling into smaller fragments at every send of the swell.

By this time a considerable crowd of men had got into the pinnace on the booms in hopes that she might float off as the ship sunk; but Captain Hickey, seeing that the boat was so loaded that she could never swim, desired some twenty men to quit her; and, what is particularly worthy of remark, his orders, which were given with perfect coolness, were as promptly obeyed as ever. Throughout the whole of these trying moments, indeed, the discipline of the ship appears to have been maintained not only without the smallest trace of insubordination but with a degree of cheerfulness which is described as truly wonderful. Even when the masts fell, the sound of the crashing spars were drowned in the animating huzzars of the undaunted crew, though they were then clinging to the weather gunwale, with the sea, from time to time, making a clean breach over them, and when they were expecting every instant to be carried to the bottom!

As soon as the pinnace was relieved from the pressure of the crowd, she floated off the booms or rather was knocked off by a sea, which turned her bottom upwards, and whelmed her into the surf amidst the fragments of the wreck. The people however, imitating the gallant bearing of their captain, and keeping their eyes fixed upon him, never for one instant lost their self possession. By dint of great exertions, they succeeded not only in righting the boat but disentangled her from the confused heap of spars, and the dash of the breakers, so as to place her at a little distance from the wreck where they waited for further orders from the captain, who with about forty men, still clung to the poor remains of the gay Atalante once so much admired!

An attempt was next made to construct a raft, as it was feared the three boats could not possibly carry all hands; but the violence of the waves prevented this, and it was resolved to trust to the boats alone, though they were already to all appearance quite full. It was now, however absolutely necessary to take to them, as the wreck was disappearing rapidly; and in order to pack close, most of the men were removed to the pinnace, where they laid flat in the bottom, like herrings in a barrel, while the small

boats returned to pick off the rest. This was no easy matter m any case, while it was impossible in others; so that many men had to swim for it; others were dragged through the waves by ropes, and some were forked off by oars and other small spars.

Amongst the crew there was ce famous merry fellow, a black fiddler, who was discovered at this critical juncture clinging to the main chains with his beloved Cremona squeezed tightly but deli cately under his arm-a ludicrous picture of distress, and a subject of some joking amongst the men even at this moment. It soon became absolutely necessary that he should lose one of the two things his fiddle or his life. So, at last, after a painful struggle, the professor and his violin were obliged to part company!

The pinnace now contained seventy-nine men and one man, the cutter forty-two and the gig eighteen, with which cargoes they barely floated. Captain Hickey was, of course, the last man who left the wreck; though such was the respect and affection felt for him by his crew, that those who stood along with him on this last vestage of the ship, evinced the greatest reluctance at leaving their commander in such a perilous predicament. So speedy indeed was the work of destruction, that by the time the Captain was fairly in the boat, the wreck had almost entirely melted into the yest of waves.' The crew, however, gave her three hearty cheers as she went down, and then finally abandoned the scattered fragments, of what had been their house and home for nearly seven years.

The fog still continued as thick as ever; the binacles had both been washed overboard, and no compass could be procured. As the wind was still light, there was great difficulty in steering in a straight line. Had there been a breeze, it would perhaps have been easier to have shaped a course. In this dilemma a resource was hit upon, which for a time answered pretty well to guide them. It being known loosely, before leaving the wreck, in what direction the land was situated, the three boats were placed in a row pointing that way. The sternmost boat then quitted her station in the rear, and pulled ahead till she came in a line with the other two boats, but took care not to go so far as to be lost in the fog; the boat which was now astern then rowed ahead, as the first had done, and so on doubling along one after the other. This tardy method of proceeding however answered only for a time; at length they were completely at loss which way to steer. Precisely at this moment of greatest need, an old quarter-master, Samuc} Shanks by name, recollected that at the end of his watch chain there hung a small compass seal. This precious discovery was announced to the other boats by a joyous shout from the pinnace.

The compass being speedily handed into the gig, to the captain, was placed on top of the chronometer, which had been nobly saved by the clerk; and as this instrument worked on jimbles, the little

needle remained upon it sufficiently steady for stee. ing the boats within a few points.

This was enough to insure hitting land, from which they had been steering quite wide. Before reaching the shore, they fell in with an old fisherman, who piloted them to a light, called Portuguese Cove, where they all landed in safety, at a distance of twenty miles from Halifax.

THE EDDYSTONE LIGHT-HOUSE.

This most celebrated light-house is built on the Eddystone rocks These are situate nearly south-south-west from the middle of Plymouth sound, England, according to the true meridian The distance from the port of Plymouth is nearly fourteen miles; and from the promontory called Ramhead, about ten miles. They are almost in the line, but somewhat within it, which joins the Start and the Lizard points; and as they lie nearly in the direction of vessels coasting up and down the channel, they were necessarily, before the establishment of light-houses, very dangerous, and often fatal to ships under such circumstances. Their situation, likewise, with regard to the Bay of Biscay, and the Atlantic Ocean, is such, that they lie open to the swells of the bay and ocean from all south-western points of the compass, which swells are generally allowed by mariners to be very great and heavy in those seas, and particularly in the Bay of Biscay. It is to be observed that the soundings of the sea from the south-westward, toward the Eddystone, are from eighty fathoms to forty, and every where till you come near the Eddystone, the sea is full thirty fathoms in depth; so that all the heavy seas from the south-west come uncontrolled upon the Eddystone rocks, and break on them with the utmost fury.

The force and height of these seas is increased by the circumstance of the rocks stretching across the channel, in a north and south direction, to the length of above one hundred fathoms, and by their lying in a sloping manner toward the south-west quarter. This striving of the rocks, as it is technically called, does not cease at low water, but still goes on progressively; so that, at fifty fathoms westward, there are twelve fathoms water, nor do they terminate altogether at the distance of a mile. From this configuration it happens, that the seas are swelled to such a degree in storms and hard gales of wind, as to break on the rocks with the utmost violence.

The effect of this slope is likewise sensibly felt in moderate, and even in calm weather, for the liberation of the vater, caused.