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8 VISITS TO MADAGASCAR. CUAP. I. on board the fine iron screw steam-ship, “ Indiana,” of 1800 tons’ burden; and in the afternoon of the following day, having taken in our mails at Plymouth, we stood out to sea. The evening became cold and cloudy, but many of my fellow- passengers remained on deck until a late hour, watching the varied objects of interest on the land, till the shadows of evening, spreading over cliff and cove, concealed the shore and all beyond it from our view. My own thoughts and feelings were very different from those with which, in early life, I had, when sailing over the same course, looked, as I supposed, for the last time on England and all its highly-prized and fondly-cherished associations; and I sought afresh to commit myself, and all connected with me, to His divine protection whose goodness had been hither to so constantly enjoyed. The wind in the commencement of our voyage was light, but we felt no discouragement on that account, as we found by noon on the first day that we had traversed the space of 206 miles. The breeze soon became more favourable, and for the first seven days of our passage we sailed about 240 miles each day without the aid of steam; and when the wind ceased, we were propelled at about the same rate by steam alone. This was my first voyage in an ocean steamer of such dimensions; and when the water was tolerably smooth, the en gine-room became a place of great attraction to me, where the wonderful adjustment of the vast machinery and the exact and easy working of the whole, notwithstanding the motion of the sea, often excited intense admiration. Our chief engineer, an intelligent young Scotchman, told me that when using full steam force the engine-fires consumed thirty tons of coal per day, that the screw made 3540 revolutions in the hour, that each single revolution of the screw propelled our unwieldy iron vessel nineteen feet through the water, and that in ordinary weather our usual speed was nine or ten miles an hour. Un-