“Huzza! huzza! huzza! The bottle is a good post, and the Atlantic delivers letters according to direction.
| 208 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 28. |
“Yours of May 23. 1802 Lat 33 . 46 N. Lon. 64 . 27 W. was found by Messrs. Calmer and Seymour, of St Salvador’s, Dec 18, 1802, on the N.W. of that island, Lat. 23 . 30 N. Lon. 73 . 30 W. very civilly enclosed by some Mr. Aley Pratt, Feb, 10., sent per Betsey Cains, Capt. Wilmott, and has this day reached me from Ramsgate, to my very great surprise and satisfaction. You had sealed it so clumsily, that some of the writing was torn, and the salt water had got at it, so that the letter is in a ruinous state; but it shall be preserved as the greatest curiosity in my collection. I shall send the account to Stuart.
“I did heartily regret that you were not here; we would have drawn a cork in honour of Messrs. Calmer and Seymour, and Aley Pratt, who, by keeping the letter two months, really seem to have been sensible that the letter was of value. When I consider the quadrillion of chances against such a circumstance, it seems like a dream,—the middle of the Atlantic, thrown in there! cast on a corner of St. Salvador’s, and now here, at No. 12, St. James’s Place, Kingsdown, Bristol; hunting me through the ocean to the Bahamas, and then to this very individual spot. Oh, that the bottle had kept a log-book! If the Bottle-conjurer had been in it, now!
“I think this letter decisive of a current; chance
winds would never have carried it 600 miles in less than seven months: and, if
I recollect right, by theory there ought to be a current in that direction.
Supposing the bottle to have been found the very day it
| Ætat. 28. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 209 |
