(_Abridged from Tom Cringle's Log, in Blackwood's Magazine._)


During the night we stood off and on under easy sail, and next morning,
when the day broke, with a strong breeze and a fresh shower, we were
about two miles of the Moro Castle, at the entrance of Santiago de Cuba.

The fresh green shores of this glorious island lay before us, fringed
with white surf, as the everlasting ocean in its approach to it
gradually changed its dark blue colour, as the water shoaled, into a
bright, joyous green under the blazing sun, as if in sympathy with the
genius of the fair land, before it tumbled at his feet its gently
swelling billows, in shaking thunders on the reefs and rocky face of the
coast, against which they were driven up in clouds, the incense of their
sacrifice. The undulating hills in the vicinity were all either cleared,
and covered with the greenest verdure that imagination can picture, over
which strayed large herds of cattle, or with forests of gigantic trees,
from amongst which, every now and then, peeped out some palm-thatched
mountain settlement, with its small thread of blue smoke floating up
into the calm, clear morning air, while the blue hills in the distance
rose higher and higher, and more and more blue, and dreamy, and
indistinct, until their rugged summits could not be distinguished from
the clouds through the glimmering hot haze of the tropics.

A very melancholy accident happened to a poor boy on board, of about
fifteen years of age, who had already become a great favourite of mine
from his modest, quiet deportment, as well as of all the
gunroom-officers, although he had not been above a fortnight in the
ship. He had let himself down over the bows by the cable to bathe. There