Finally, he succeeded in getting out seventeen hundred fathoms without parting. Bottom was reached at this depth.

Out of the first seventeen casts that were made, this was the only successful one.

He was now in a fair way to get at the secret. The plan is to double or triple the line for the first three hundred fathoms; and, instead of letting the shot take it as fast as it will, and so bring up occasionally with a violent jerk and parting, and this, as experience abundantly proves, is very liable to be the case, particularly at the first going off, when the shot is sinking rapidly,-Lee also adopted the expedient of keeping a gentle strain on the line at first, and this was accomplished by allowing a little friction to be applied to the reel, so that it would not for the first three hundred fathoms give the line to the shot quite as fast as the shot wanted to take it.

An important part of the plan, also, was that of keeping the boat, by means of a couple or more of oars, perpendicularly over the shot. To be sure that he had reached bottom, he on several occasions repeated the trial, using in this case two instead of one thirty-two pound shot for a sinker. The result was the same agreement as to depth.

Success crowned his efforts so far, and he now began to have such confidence in his results,-for the mark of each successive hundred fathoms, as it went out, was carefully timed,--that, with his shot on the bottom at the depth of three or four miles, he would use it as an anchor, ride by it in his boat out there in mid ocean, while the force and set of the surface current, out upon blue water in the open sea, were accurately determined. This was the first time that such a

thing had been done.

Thus, the egg was made to stand upon its end; and the plan of deep sea soundings finally adopted, and now in practice, is this:Every vessel of the navy, when she is preparing for sea, is, if her commander, or, with his consent, any officer on board, will pledge himself to attend to the deep sea soundings, furnished with a sufficient quantity of sounding twine, carefully marked at every length of one hundred fathoms,-six hundred feet, and wound on reels of ten thousand fathoms each. It is the duty of the commander to avail himself of every favourable opportunity to try the depth of the ocean whenever he may find himself out upon "blue water." For this purpose he is to use a cannon-ball of thirty-two pounds as a plummet. Having one end of the line attached to it, the cannon-ball is to be thrown overboard from a boat, and suffered to take the twine from the reel as fast as it will; and the reel is made to turn easily.

When Lieut. Berryman took charge of the brig, and went to sea, of course he availed himself of Lee's experience, and commenced where Lee had left off.

But there was still one thing wanting; positive evidence that the plummet had reached the bottom; for, hitherto, the plan had not contemplated bringing up specimens of the bottom, inasmuch as the hauling up of the shot from such great depth was regarded as an impracticability.

In this stage of the matter Passed Midshipman J. M. Brooke, a clever young officer, who was at the time doing duty at the Observatory, proposed to me a contrivance by which he thought the shot might be detached as soon as it touched the bottom, and specimens brought up in its stead.

I was in the habit of consulting him; he often assisted me with his reflections; and I referred him to Mr. Greble, the instrument-maker of the Observatory, that they two might give his idea shape, and construct a model of the machine. The result was Brooke's Deep Sea Sounding Apparatus, as exhibited on plates 7 and 8. It is a simple and beautiful contrivance, which a mere inspection of the plates seems sufficient to explain.

[We find the foregoing remarks on deep sea sounding in Maury's Sailing Directions; and certainly if we have set our friends across the Atlantic the example of making these very interesting experiments, as we certainly have done, they have shown us a more satisfactory way of making them than we had ourselves adopted, albeit there may attach some little more expense to their improved method. Indeed to sacrifice some thirty or forty miles length of good stout and carefully made fishing line was a worthy offering in such a cause, and leaves our method of expending old junk for the purpose, with a broken pig of ballast at its end, in the far distance of an economical horizon. There is something besides in the certainty of the result, and with such means as appear to have been supplied for the purpose the confidence with which the depths are reported is quite admissible. We have availed ourselves of the polite attention of Mr. Maury to present to our readers, along with the above paper, an impression of the plate, showing the principal deep water casts alluded to by him, and obtained by the U.S. brig Dolphin, mentioned in a former number of this volume. It is a grand commencement in a great subject of physical geographythe actual depth of the ocean. The little Dolphin has done her work well, as we have previously observed,* and the numerous results which she has brought to light reflect the highest credit on her commander, Lieut. Lee, and his officers. But it appears from the foregoing that these results of the Dolphin are likely to be added to by any vessel of the United States Navy whose commander "will pledge himself to attend to the deep sea soundings," so that we anticipate a considerable number of important contributions on this subject from our American friends, of results that may be depended on in more parts of the globe than the Atlantic Ocean.-ED.]

* See Nautical Magazine for December last, p. 682.

DEPTHS OF THE OCEAN,-The Chart.

Referring to the chart of the Atlantic Ocean in our present number, Lieut. Maury observes,- "To measure the elevation of the mountain top above the sea, and to lay down upon our maps the mountain ridges of the earth, is regarded in geography as an important thing, and rightly so. Equally important is it in bringing the physical geography of the sea regularly within the domains of science, to present its orology, by mapping out the bottom of the ocean so as to show the depressions of the solid parts of the earth's crust there, below the sea-level. It relates exclusively to the bottom of that part of the Atlantic Ocean which lies North of 10° South. It is stippled with four shades: the darkest (that which is nearest the shore-line) shows where the water is less than six thousand feet deep; the next where it is less than twelve thousand feet deep; the third where it is less than eighteen thousand feet; and the fourth, or lightest, where it is not over twenty-four thousand feet deep. The blank space South of Nova Scotia and the Grand Banks includes a district within which very deep water has been reported; but from casts of the deep sea lead, which, upon discussion, do not appear satisfactory.

"The deepest part of the North Atlantic is probably somewhere between the Bermudas and the Grand Banks, but how deep it may be yet remains for the cannon-ball and the sounding twine to determine. "The waters of the Gulf of Mexico are held in a basin about a mile deep in the deepest part.

"The bottom of the Atlantic, or its depressions below the sea-level, are given perhaps on this plate with as much accuracy as the best geographers have been enabled to show on a map the elevations above the sea-level of the interior of Africa or Australia.”

Note.-It appears from Lieut. Maury's valuable work quoted above that the deepest bottom yet brought up, is from 2150 fathoms, in the Coral Sea, lat. 13° S.,. long. 162° E., by Mr. Brooke's lead.

ANOTHER WORD ABOUT COLUMBUS.

[The Editor of this journal having just performed the difficult task of ascertaining the real Landfall of Columbus on his first voyage to America, and shown not only that but the track which he adopted on his way thence to Cuba, (all of which appears on the chart now published with the result of his investigations by the Admiralty publisher,) will perhaps be permitted to preserve here the last interesting account of the great navigator, from the pen of that accomplished writer *See New Books.

NO. 7.-VOL. XXV.

3 A

Washington Irving, that appeared a short time ago in the volume of Murray's Family Library entitled the Voyages of the Companions of Columbus. And having no opportunities of learning that any measures have been followed up with the view of preserving his memory at Huelva or its neighbourhood, he will be thankful to any of his readers for information on the subject.]

Seville, 1828.

Since I last wrote to you I have made, what I may term, an American Pilgrimage, to visit the little port of Palos in Andalusia, where Columbus fitted out his ships, and whence he sailed for the discovery of the New World. Need I tell you how deeply interesting and gratifying it has been to me? I had long meditated this excursion, as a kind of pious. and, if I may so say, filial duty of an American, and my intention was quickened when I learnt that many of the edifices, mentioned in the History of Columbus, still remained in nearly the same state in which they existed at the time of his sojourn at Palos, and that the descendants of the intrepid Pinzons, who aided him with ships and money, and sailed with him in the great voyage of discovery, still flourished in the neighbourhood.

The very evening before my departure from Seville on the excursion, I heard that there was a young gentleman of the Pinzon family studying law in the city. I got introduced to him, and found him of most prepossessing appearance and manners. He gave me a letter of introduction to his father, Don Juan Fernandez Pinzon, resident of Moguer, and the present head of the family.

As it was in the middle of August, and the weather intensely hot, I hired a calesa for the journey. This is a two-wheeled carriage, resembling a cabriolet, but of the most primitive and rude construction; the harness is profusely ornamented with brass, and the horse's head decorated with tufts and tassels and dangling bobs of scarlet and yellow worsted. I had, for calasero, a tall, long-legged Andalusian, in short jacket, little round-crowned hat, breeches decorated with buttons from the hip to the knees, and a pair of russet leather bottinas or spatterdashes. He was an active fellow, though uncommonly taciturn for an Andalusian, and strode along beside his horse, rousing him occasionally to greater speed by a loud malediction or a hearty thwack of his cudgel.

In this style, I set off late in the day to avoid the noontide heat, and after ascending the lofty range of hills that borders the great valley of the Guadalquivir, and having a rough ride among their heights, I descended about twilight into one of those vast, silent, melancholy plains, frequent in Spain, where I beheld no other signs of life than a roaming flock of bustards, and a distant herd of cattle, guarded by a solitary herdsman, who, with a long pike planted in the earth, stood motionless in the midst of the dreary landscape, resembling an Arab of the desert. The night had somewhat advanced when we stopped to repose for a few hours at a solitary venta or inn, if it might so be called, being nothing more than a vast low-roofed stable, divided into several compartments for the reception of the troops of mules and

arrieros (or carriers) who carry on the internal trade of Spain. Accommodation for the traveller there was none-not even for a traveller so easily accommodated as myself. The landlord had no food to give me, and as to a bed, he had none but a horse cloth, on which his only child, a boy of eight years old, lay naked on the earthen floor. Indeed the heat of the weather and the fumes from the stables made the interior of the hovel insupportable, so I was fain to bivouac on my cloak on the pavement at the door of the venta, where, on waking after two or three hours of sound sleep, I found a contrabandista (or smuggler) snoring beside me, with his blunderbuss on his arm.

I resumed my journey before break of day, and had made several leagues by ten o'clock, when we stopped to breakfast, and to pass the sultry hours of midday in a large village, from whence we departed about four o'clock, and, after passing through the same kind of solitary country, arrived just after sunset at Moguer. This little city (for at present it is a city) is situated about a league from Palos, of which place it has gradually absorbed all the respectable inhabitants, and, among the number, the whole family of the Pinzons.

So remote is this little place from the stir and bustle of travel, and so destitute of the show and vainglory of this world, that my calesa, as it rattled and jingled along the narrow and ill-paved streets, caused a great sensation; the children shouted and scampered along by its side, admiring its splendid trappings of brass and worsted, and gazing with reverence at the important stranger who came in so gorgeous an equipage.

I drove up to the principal posada, the landlord of which was at the door. He was one of the very civilest men in the world, and disposed to do everything in his power to make me comfortable; there was only one difficulty, he had neither bed nor bedroom in his house. In fact it was a mere venta for muleteers, who are accustomed to sleep on the ground with their mule cloths for beds and pack-saddles for pillows. It was a hard case, but there was no better posada in the place. Few people travel for pleasure or curiosity in these out-of-theway parts of Spain, and those of any note are generally received into private houses. I had travelled sufficiently in Spain to find out that a bed, after all, is not an article of indispensable necessity, and was about to bespeak some quiet corner where I might spread my cloak, when fortunately the landlord's wife came forth. She could not have a more obliging disposition than her husband, but then-God bless the women!-they always know how to carry their good wishes into effect. In a little while a small room, about ten feet square, that had formed a thoroughfare between the stables and a kind of shop or bar room, was cleared of a variety of lumber, and I was assured that a bed should be put up there for me. From the consultations I saw my hostess holding with some of her neighbour gossips, I fancied the bed was to be a kind of piece-meal contribution among them for the credit of the house.

As soon as I could change my dress, I commenced the historical.