in boats, or other laborious employment; and those who return at night
without the sum thus arbitrarily assessed as the value of their day's
work, are severely flogged for their presumed idleness.

MIDDY'S GRAVE.

During our brief stay at Bahia I paid a visit to the grave of poor young
Musters, a little Middy in the Beagle during our last voyage, who died
here on the 19th May, 1832, from the effects of a fever caught while away
on an excursion up the river Macacu. He was a son of Lord Byron's Mary,
and a great favourite with all on board. Poor boy! no stone marks his
lonely resting place upon a foreign shore, but the long grass waves over
his humble grave, and the tall palm tree bends to the melancholy wind
that sighs above it. As I paid his memory the tribute due to his many
virtues and his early death, I breathed a prayer that the still and
placid beauty of the spot where his mortal remains return to their
kindred dust, may typify the tranquil happiness of that world of spirits
with which his own is now united!

MR. "VERY WELL DICE."

On the afternoon of Friday the 25th, we left the magnificent bay of
Bahia, and after obtaining an offing, stood away to the southward and
eastward. I was much amused by a story of Grey's a day or two after we
sailed: it seems he had mistaken the Quartermaster's usual call in
conning the ship of "Very well, dice" (a corruption of "very well, thus")
for a complimentary notice of the man at the helm; and anxious to know
the individual who so distinguished himself, had two or three times gone
on deck to see "Mr. Very well Dice:" finding a different helmsman each
time, completely confounded him; and when I explained the matter, he