Matters, on the morning of the 5th, assumed a very different aspect from that which we had experienced for the last two days; the wind gradually subsided, and, with it the sea, and a favorable breeze now springing up, we were enabled to make a good offing.  Fortunately, no accident of consequence occurred, although several of our people were severely bruised by falls.  Poor fellows! they certainly suffered enough; not a dry stitch, not a dry hammock have they had since we sailed.  Happily, however, their misfortunes are soon forgot in a dry shirt and a can of grog.

The most melancholy part of the narrative is still to be told.  On coming up to our anchorage, we observed an unusual degree of curiosity and bustle in the fort; crowds of people were congregated on both sides, running to and fro, examining us through spyglasses; in short, an extraordinary commotion was apparent.  The meaning of all this was but too soon made known to us by a boat coming alongside, from which we learned that the unfortunate Saldanha had gone to pieces, and every man perished!  Our own destruction had likewise been reckoned inevitable, from the time of the discovery of the unhappy fate of our consort, five days beforehand; and hence the astonishment at our unexpected return.  From all that could be learned concerning the dreadful catastrophe, I am inclined to believe that the Saldanha had been driven on the rocks about the time our doom appeared so certain in another quarter.  Her lights were seen by the signal-tower at nine o’clock of that fearful Wednesday night, December 4th, after which it is supposed she went ashore on the rocks at a small bay called Ballymastaker, almost at the entrance of Lochswilly harbor.

Next morning the beach was strewed with fragments of the wreck, and upward of two hundred of the bodies of the unfortunate sufferers were washed ashore.  One man—­and one only—­out of the three hundred, was ascertained to have come ashore alive, but almost in a state of insensibility.  Unhappily, there was no person present to administer to his wants judiciously, and, upon craving something to drink, about half a pint of whiskey was given him by the people, which almost instantly killed him.  Poor Packenham’s body was recognized amid the others, and like these, stripped quite naked by the inhuman wretches, who flocked to the wreck as to a blessing!  It is even suspected that he came on shore alive, but was stripped and left to perish.  Nothing could equal the audacity of the plunderers, although a party of the Lanark militia was doing duty around the wreck.  But this is an ungracious and revolting subject, which no one of proper feeling would wish to dwell upon.  Still less am I inclined to describe the heart-rending scene at Buncrana, where the widows of many of the sufferers are residing.  The surgeon’s wife, a native of Halifax, has never spoken since the dreadful tidings arrived.  Consolation is inadmissible, and no one has yet ventured to offer it.