At Dartmouth, on the 14th of June, we joined the Balmoral Castle, a beautiful new steamer of the Donald Currie Line, bound for the Cape of Good Hope. She had left the London Docks three days before, having all our goods on board except the chronometers, which we brought with us. None of the outward-bound English mail ships touch at Ascension, so that we were under the necessity of taking our passage to St. Helena, there to wait for a return steamer from the Cape to take us back to Ascension.

After a rapid railway journey, we enjoyed a quiet night in harbour. Next morning we had a stroll through the picturesque little town of Dartmouth; for our ship would not sail until mid-day on the 15th. What a curious old town it is!—with its steep, narrow streets, shaded and cooled by projecting piazzas and gable-ends. Bewitched by the quaintness of the place, one sees the streets again alive with the brave army of Red Cross Knights that sailed from this fair bay so many hundred years ago to do battle against the Saracen, and pictures many a “ladye bright” peeping shyly from the little latticed windows to wave a last adieu to her own true knight.