At A Short Distance From The Water, We Came Upon An Hotel Of Very Prepossessing Appearance, Which We Concluded To Be The One To Which We Were Bound.

The windows of the lower and upper floors were all open, the rooms lighted, showing clean, gay-looking paper upon the walls, and furniture of a tempting appearance.

Our conductor, however, passed the door, and dived down a lane, upon which we halted, and declared our resolution to go no further. After a little parley, and amongst other representations of the superior accommodations of the unknown hotel, an assurance that the stables were magnificent, we gained our point, and entered the house which had pleased us so much. We were met at the door by two well-dressed, good-looking women, who showed us into some excellent apartments up-stairs, all apparently newly-fitted up, and exceedingly well-furnished.

Ordering supper, we descended to the public room, and as we passed to a table at the farther end, noticed a young man sitting rather disconsolately at a window. We were laughing and talking with each other, when, suddenly starting up, the stranger youth exclaimed, "You are English? how glad I am to hear my own language spoken again!" He told us that he was travelling through France to Malta, and had come by the other steam-boat, in which there were no other English passengers beside himself. He then inquired whether a lady had not been drowned who came by our vessel; we answered no; but upon his assurance that such was the fact, we began to entertain a suspicion that the truth had been concealed from us. It was not, however, until the next morning, that we could learn the particulars. The gentleman who had accompanied us, and who had likewise been deceived by the statements made to him, ascertained that the accident had befallen the elderly French lady, with whose appearance we had been so much pleased. She had got on board a boat moored close to ours, and believing that she had only to step on shore, actually walked into the river. She was only ten minutes under water, and the probabilities are, that if the circumstance had been made known, and prompt assistance afforded, she might have been resuscitated. Amid the number of English passengers on board the steamer, the chances were very much in favour of its carrying a surgeon, accustomed to the best methods to be employed in such cases. No inquiry of the kind was made, and we understood that the body had been conveyed to a church, there to await the arrival of a medical man from the town.

We were, of course, inexpressibly shocked by this fatal catastrophe, the more so because we all felt that we might have been of use had we been told the truth. The grief and distraction of the son and daughter, who had thus lost a parent, very possibly prevented them from taking the best measures in a case of such emergence; whereas strangers, anxious to be of service, and having all their presence of mind at command, might have afforded very important assistance.

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