in its mercy sends to break the monotony of a sea-voyage.  Ever since daybreak this morning an English brig has been standing at a considerable distance behind us.  About an hour ago we went on deck to watch the approach of a boat which they were sending off in our direction.  The distance was about five miles, and the men had a hard pull in the broiling heat.  When they came on board, you should have seen how we all clustered about them.  The ship was a merchantman from Bristol, bound to New York; she had been out eleven weeks, her provisions were beginning to run short, and the crew was on allowance.  Our captain, who is a gentleman, furnished them with flour, tea, sugar, porter, cold tongue, ham, eggs, etc., etc.  The men remained about half an hour on board, and as they were remanning their boat we saw a whole cargo of eatables carried to it from our steerage passengers.  You know that these are always poor people, who are often barely supplied themselves with necessaries for their voyage.  The poor are almost invariably kind and compassionate to one another, and Gaffer Gray is half right when he says—­

“The poor man alone,
When he hears the poor moan,
Of his morsel one morsel will give.”

They (the men from the brig) gave us news from Halifax, where they had put in.  The cholera had been in Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New York; the latter town was almost deserted, and the people flying in numbers from the others.  This was rather bad news to us, who were going thither to find audiences (if possible not few, whether fit or not), but it was awful to such as were going back to their homes and families.  I looked at the anxious faces gathered round our informer, and thought how the poor hearts were flying, in terrible anticipation of the worst, to the nests where they had left their dear ones, and eagerly counting every precious head in the homes over which so black a cloud of doom had gathered in their absence....  My father, though a bad sailor, and suffering occasionally a good deal, has, upon the whole, borne the voyage well.  Poor dear Dall has been the greatest wretch on board; she has been perfectly miserable the whole time.  It has made me very unhappy, for she has come away from those she loves very dearly on my account, and I cannot but feel sad to see that most excellent creature now, in what should be the quiet time of her life, leaving home and all its accustomed ways, habits, and comforts, and dear A——­, who is her darling, to come wandering to the ends of the earth after me....  These distant and prolonged separations seem like foretastes of death....  We have seen an American sun, and an American moon, and American stars, and we think they “get up these things better than we do.”  We have had several fresh squalls, and one heavy gale; we have shipped sundry seas; we have had rat-hunting and harpooning of porpoises; we have caught several hake and dogfish.

NEW YORK, AMERICA, Wednesday, September 5, 1832.