sembly, whose everlasting happiness is the fondest wish and continual prayer of their absent pastor. My thoughts continually visit you: they range from house to house, and from street to street, and from the centre to the borders, and even the most distant family, which God has visited with great and repeated afflictions. I have the sick in earnest and devout remembrance, and should esteem it a high privilege if I could sit by their beds of languishing, and aid their last exercises, and fervently commend them to the divine mercy, and direct them to that compassionate Being, who breaks not the bruised reed, nor quenches the smoking flax, but with open arms invites the weary and heavy laden to him for everlasting rest.

"You will indulge me to hope for a remembrance in your prayers. In concluding this brief epistle, I give you the words of the apostle :

"Finally, brethren, farewell; be perfect, be of good comfort, be of one mind, live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you.

"Your affectionate and devoted pastor.

A. ABBOT."

The winter at Charleston was uncommonly mild, and the state of his health enabled him often to aid the labours of the pastor of a society, to whose opinions his own were most congenial, and to gratify his curiosity by attention to objects of interest in the city. In the beginning of December, when the heat and sands of the city interrupted his accustomed exercise, and the frequent testimonials of affectionate hospitality required

exertions to which his health was inadequate, he was induced to embrace an early tendered invitation of Mr. L. to resume a residence in his affectionate and hospitable family on John's Island. Here, in the bosom of affectionate friendship, he experienced every attention, which could relieve the pain of absence from his family and flock, and contribute to his personal comfort and the recovery of his health. The space of a month was passed in this delightful retreat, when a change in the season, and the prevalence of cold winds on the island determined his resolution of embarking for Cuba.

On the eve of embarking, he thus writes to his family ;——“ Yesterday I received your delightful and most unexpected letter. How good is God, to preserve us at home and far away in health; for so I may now almost say of myself. I have a little cough, as you know I used to have before April last. In good weather it is little or no trouble." "I am cheerful, and I hope grateful.

tanzas."

*

*

I expect to sail tomorrow for Ma

He sailed on Feb. 9. In a letter from sea he writes, "There is a new sky over me. The clouds seem differently formed, and of a more watery aspect than I have been wont to see. Much alarm was excited during the passage by a perilous incident. At midnight the whirl of a water-spout passed so near the vessel, as to fill the sails in a contrary direction, and broke so near, as either directly, or by'a rebound from the ocean, to drench with a portion of its water the deck. On the morning of the sixteenth, the high hills of Cuba

were descried." On the day following his arrival at Matanzas, he left the city, by a romantic river, for the plantation of a friend, a short distant in the interior. "Thus suddenly" he writes, "was I transferred to the country, much better adapted to health, and to one of the most picturesque and delightful scenes in the world, a valley of plantations walled in by mountains, and seeming one extensive garden of richest fruits and flowers. Here, some weeks were passed in society chiefly of Americans, and most of them from New-England. He was much impressed by the scenes of grandeur and novelty around him. "I bless God," he writes, "for his mercy by sea and land. I rejoice in my removal to a still more auspicious climate, and to a world inexhaustible in novelties. I see nothing old-l is new; it is as if I were transferred to a new world. It seems like gentle summer, fanned with refreshing gales." During his residence in the interior, he made an excursion, in company with scientific and intelligent friends, to the bay of Cardenas and the mountains of Hacana in the east. "We were not altogether fortunate,” he writes, " in the morning, a thin fog lingering in the horizon. But the ocean at the bay of Cardenas was perfectly visible from these mountains, and the form of the island lying N. E. at the distance of about twenty miles. It is certain that the eye here spans the island at a single station; and the observer can entertain no doubt, that a line of forty-five or fifty miles would reach from the Caribbean sea to the Atlantic. The mountains extend in an irregular way W. 120 miles, and E.

about 6 miles. Beyond this limit, to the east, the island is a level country about 300 miles, and from sea to sea."

His observations were directed under favourable circumstances to the objects of natural, political and religious interest, which this part of the island presented to the stranger. Two following weeks were spent in Matanzas and its vicinity under equal advantages. At this period he writes, "I have the pleasure to assure you that I am daily improving in health and strength. Through the great goodness of God, I trust I am invigorating a debilitated constitution in a manner, which may enable me to be farther useful to my family and people. My cough is not absolutely extinct; I do not think I have reason to expect that it will be so, till the tabernacle itself shall be taken down. But experience since my former excursion at the south, leads me to hope that it may be kept under by general good health, and care not to over do, as I did last summer. How I long, if it may please my Master, to do him service and the cause of Christ, and to be a blessing to my family and my affectionate people. All. the strange and beautiful scenes around me cannot divert my thought from home, sweet home," and from thinking of the dearest country on the globe, the freest people on the earth, and the most enlightened portion of the human family and the most moral. Faults they have, and very many. There is civil dissension and party violence. There is ecclesiastical jealousy and unchristian intolerance, at which the finger of scorn or of triumph is pointed from

lands of civil and ecclesiastical despotism. But, America," with all thy faults, I love thee still," and, more than all, the land of the Pilgrims; and the spot, where the trees planted by the hand of Endicott, still by their shade and fruits cheer his descendants."

In the month of March, in company with some friends and a Spanish guide, he commenced a journey through the intermediate villages of St Cyrilo, Haruco and Guanamacoa, for Havana. The first part of this route was mostly through a territory occupied as pasturage land, with occasional plantations, and in view of the mountains of San Juan. From St. Cyrilo to Haruco, is a champaign country, with a distant view of hills. From Guanamacoa, the white towers of Havana, with the view of its bay and suburbs and surrounding gardens, were visible. After a short stay in Havana, he spent the remaining time of his residence in Cuba, in the vast garden of the island lying between Havana and the mountains of Cusco, and the southern and northern waters, which wash the shores of that section of the island. He was attended almost constantly by friends, who with distinguished hospitality ministered to his health, and directed and facilitated his inquiries. "You will not expect me," he writes at this period from the plantation of a friend in the mountains of San Salvador, "to detail my other three ascents, as I have preserved them for you in MSS.* nor to relate the hospitality and courtesy, with which I am every where greeted. The time is now near, I humbly hope, through

Letters from Cuba,