Our hero was, at an early age, put to a grammar school of good repute, in his native village, and, at seventeen, was sent to Princeton, to prepare himself for some profession; during his third year at that place, in one of his excursions to Philadelphia, he became enamoured “with one of those faces and forms, which, in a youth of twenty, to see, admire, and love, is one and the same thing;” and was united to the object of his affections, on the anniversary of his twenty-first year.  This event gave him a distaste for serious study; and, long before this, he had felt a sentiment, bordering on contempt, for mercantile pursuits; he therefore prevailed upon his father to purchase him a neat country seat in the vicinity of Huntingdon.  Here, seventeen happy years glided away swiftly and imperceptibly, when death, by depriving him of the partner of his felicity, prostrated all his hopes and enjoyments.  For the purpose of seeking for that relief to the feelings, which variety can best afford, he now determined to make a voyage; and, as one of his father’s vessels was about to sail for Canton, embarked on board of her, and left Sandyhook on the 5th day of June, 1822.  From this period, until the 24th of October, their voyage was comparatively agreeable; but when off the mouths of the Ganges, one of those hurricanes, well known to the experienced navigators of the eastern seas, struck the ship, and rendered her so leaky, that the captain considered it advisable to make for the nearest port; the leak, however, increasing rapidly, and finding themselves off a coast, which the captain, by his charts, pronounced to be a part of the Burman empire, and in the neighbourhood of Mergui, on the Martaban coast, they hastily threw their clothes, papers, and eight casks of silver, into the long-boat; and, before they were fifty yards from the ship, had the melancholy satisfaction to see her go down.

“It was a little after mid-day when we reached the town, which is perched on a high bluff, overlooking the coasts, and contains about a thousand houses, built of bamboo, and covered with palm leaves.  Our dress, appearance, language, and the manner of our arrival, excited great surprise among the natives, and the liveliest curiosity; but with these sentiments some evidently mingled no very friendly feelings.  The Burmese were then on the eve of a rupture with the East India Company, a fact which we had not before known; and mistaking us for English, they supposed, or affected to suppose, that we belonged to a fleet which was about to invade them, and that our ship had been sunk before their eyes, by the tutelar divinity of the country.  We were immediately carried before their governor, or chief magistrate, who ordered our baggage to be searched, and finding that it consisted principally of silver, he had no doubt of our hostile intentions.  He therefore sent all of us, twenty-two in number, to prison, separating, however, each one from the rest.  My companions were released the following