I Find An Entry In My
Journal, When Off The Isle Of Wight.
We had had most tremendous weather,
successive gales of foul wind, from north and north-east.
Our schooner
was a beautiful vessel, a fine sailer with a flat bottom, drawing little
water, made purposely for Barbary ports. She had her bows completely
under water, and pitched her way for twenty-five succeeding days,
through huge rising waves of sea and foam. During the whole of this
time, I never got up, and lived on bread and water with a little
biscuit. Captain Taylor, who was a capital seaman, and took the most
accurate observations, lost all patience, and, though a good methodist,
would now and then rush on deck, and swear at the perverse gale and
wrathful sea. We took on board a fine barb for Mr. Elton, which died
after a few days at sea, in these tempests. I had a young vulture that
died a day before the horse, or we should have fed him on the carcase.
[Illustration]
An aoudad which we conveyed on account of Mr. Willshire to London, for
the Zoological Society, outlived these violent gales, and was safely and
comfortably lodged in the Regent's Park. After my return from Africa, I
paid my brave and hardy fellow-passenger a visit, and find the air of
smoky London agrees with him as well as the cloudless region of the
Morocco Desert.
APPENDIX.
The following account of the bombardment of Mogador by the French,
written at the period by an English Resident may be of interest at the
present time.
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