Page:Lord Amherst and the British Advance Eastwards to Burma.djvu/23

 on February 8, 1816. A visit to Rio de Janeiro, where the British Ambassador had the good fortune to meet the King of Portugal, was a pleasant distraction from the monotony of ship life. A fortnight in the Brazils appears indeed to have been then as common a pleasure by the way as a few days in Cairo is now that the highway to India lies through Egypt. Capetown was then the half-way-house of meetings.

'April 18. In the bay we find the Salsette and five Indiamen homeward bound. I went on board the William Pitt, East Indiaman, to pay a visit to the Countess of Loudoun who is on her way to England. She is going to take her son, Lord Hungerford, to school, and told me that she intended afterwards to rejoin Lord Moira in India. They had had a very tedious passage from Bengal, and had been twelve days in sight of the Cape without being able, from calms and contrary winds, to reach the shore.'

' April 22. Newlands, the country residence of Lord Charles Somerset, as Commander-in-Chief, is in point of situation and external appearance like a gentleman's country house in England.... It is pleasantly situated in the midst of flourishing woods, and its neighbourhood affords some most beautiful rides. These are chiefly through an unenclosed country covered with Ericas and various beautiful shrubs.... I can compare the country to nothing but a shrubbery suffered to grow wild, and abounding in the choicest and most ornamental plants.... One of our rides was, of course, to Constantia, which all strangers visit on account of its famous vineyards.'

On June 9 the party reached Anjier Bay (Batavia), 'exactly the day four months from our leaving Spithead.' Here Lord Amherst could not forbear