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for the Light, although we had been forty-one days at sea, without testing our instruments by a sight of land.
We made the light—a fine Fresnel, with a red flash—during the midwatch, and soon afterward got soundings.
We now slowed down the engine, and ran in by the lead, until we judged ourselves four or five miles distant from the light, when we hove to. The next morning revealed
Cadiz, fraught with so many ancient, and modern memories, in all its glory, though the weather was gloomy and the clouds dripping rain.
Fair Cadiz, rising o'er the dark blue sea!
as
Byron calls thee, thou art indeed lovely!
with thy white Moresque-looking houses, and gayly curtained balconies, thy church-domes which carry us back in architecture a thousand years, and thy harbor thronged with shipping.
Once the Gades of the Phoenician, now the Cadiz of the nineteenth century, thou art perhaps the only living city that can run thy record back so far into the past.
We fired a gun, and hoisted a jack for a pilot, and one boarding us soon afterward, we steamed into the harbor.
The
Confederate States' flag was flying from our peak, and we could see that there were many curious telescopes turned upon us, as we passed successively the forts and the different quays lined with shipping.
As the harbor opened upon us, a magnificent spectacle presented itself.
On our left was the somewhat distant coast of Andalusia, whose name is synonymous with all that is lovely in scenery, or beautiful in woman.
One almost fancies as he looks upon it, that he hears the amorous tinkle of the guitar, and inhales the fragrance of the orange grove.
Seville is its chief city, and who has not read the couplet,
Quien no ha visto Sevilla
No ha visto maravilla,
which may be rendered into the vernacular thus:
He who hath not Seville seen,
Hath not seen wonders, I ween.
The landscape, still green in mid-winter, was dotted with villas and villages, all white, contrasting prettily with the groves in which they were embowered.
Casting the eye forward, it
