temporarily abated.  I advanced with deep interest by the peaked group of rocks, and passed the wreck of a brig lying high and dry on the sand just before me.  The whole of the shore between the Heads, was strewed with her contents.  I never witnessed so total a wreck in so short a space of time.  The violence of the surf had completely beaten her sides out, leaving stem and stern hanging together as by a thread, while her ribs and broken cordage and sails, completed the picture, had any thing been wanting to perfect it.  I could moralize any day on a single bit of plank on a shore—­each fragment seems to tell its tale, and awakens a train of thoughts and feelings in the mind; but “grim desolation” was here visibly before me.

Though I was early astir, I found that the prospect of booty had been sufficiently powerful already to draw out not only the inhabitants of Torwich, but great numbers of the neighbouring peasantry.  But where was the ship, about whose fate we had been so greatly interested the preceding evening?  This was manifestly not her; but I distinctly saw a large, black hull lying under the western cliffs, half a mile distant, towards which the people were rapidly moving.  She had come ashore a little after high water, during the night.  I picked my way through the wreck strewn around—­to a small group of persons standing near me; five of them were strangers, the crew of the brig.  I learnt that my surmises were right concerning the ship in the distance, and that the brig which was laden with crockery came ashore about the same period.

I left these poor fellows endeavouring to rescue their little articles of property, and took a route apart from the course of the crowd towards the other ship.  I had not gone far, when I almost stumbled over the dead body of a young female, lying with her face uppermost, half buried in the sand—­

  Her very tresses clung
  All tangled by the storm.

The bodies of a gentleman of foreign aspect, and that of a lad about seventeen, (their hands still firmly clasped together, undivided even in death,) lay close by.  It was a melancholy scene.  They had evidently been a father and his children.  The long boat of the vessel, which had I suppose, taken ground here, being staved and swamped by the surf, was close beyond, near which I observed the bodies of several other men.  It was with pain and horror I remarked that some wretches who had been here before me, had partly stripped the bodies of the lady and others in their search after plunder, besides rifling the contents of some cases of valuables, which had been put into the boat.  I hastily turned towards the principal scene of disaster, and addressed myself to one of the survivors, whom I found to be the supercargo.  The vessel was La Bonne Esperance of Brest, of 550 tons, homeward bound, with a mixed cargo of rum, cotton, and colonial produce, from the West Indies.  It appeared that the captain, mate, and passengers had left the ship