While at anchor at this place, much ceremonious visiting and long conferences took place between the potentate of the
islands and the partners of the company.
I saw in the morning, some miles to the windward, the elevated summits of the
island. These waters furnished our table with excellent fish, mackerel, bonitos, and some varieties of a sea-serpent.
But at the same time the reader can hardly conceive my astonishment, to behold an
island in the air, inhabited by men, who were able (as it should seem) to raise or sink, or put it into progressive motion, as they pleased.
The whole group of
islands had just been taken possession of by Rear-Admiral Du Petit Thouars, in the name of the invincible French nation.
"I've often thought we should be much happier if we hauled out at Otter
Island instead of this crowded place," said Matkah.
N., employed on the survey, it appears that we took an exaggerated view of the badness of the climate on these
islands. But when I reflect on the almost universal covering of peat, and on the fact of wheat seldom ripening here, I can hardly believe that the climate in summer is so fine and dry as it has lately been represented.
But, when about to land the balloon, the consul was informed that the population of the
island would oppose their doing so by force.
A volcanic
island, for instance, upheaved and formed at the distance of a few hundreds of miles from a continent, would probably receive from it in the course of time a few colonists, and their descendants, though modified, would still be plainly related by inheritance to the inhabitants of the continent.
By this time I had got at a frightful distance from the
island, and had the least cloudy or hazy weather intervened, I had been undone another way, too; for I had no compass on board, and should never have known how to have steered towards the
island, if I had but once lost sight of it; but the weather continuing clear, I applied myself to get up my mast again, and spread my sail, standing away to the north as much as possible, to get out of the current.
"I wonder what is the name of this
island," said the Doctor, as he was climbing up the mountainside.
It was from the skipper of a Glasgow tramp, as passenger from Colombo to Rangoon, that I had first learned of the existence of
Island McGill; and it was from him that I had carried the letter that gave me entrance to the house of Mrs.
The water was three or four foot deep on the
island in the low places and on the Illinois bottom.
