This epistle was dated from Rio Janeiro, and written evidently under the idea that his sister had received a former letter containing every minutiae of his escape, which he had forwarded to her, under cover to Captain Seaforth, only seven days after his supposed death.

Had the captain received this letter, all anxiety would have been spared, for as he did not write to Mr.Hamilton for above a week after Edward's disappearance, it would have reached him first; it was therefore very clear it had been lost on its way, and Edward fearing such might be the case, from the uncertain method by which it had been sent, wrote again.

He had quite recovered, he said, all ill effects from being so long floating in the water on a narrow plank; that he was treated with marked kindness and attention by all the crew of the Alma, a Spanish vessel bound to Rio Janeiro and thence to New York, particularly by an Englishman, Lieutenant Mordaunt, to whose energetic exertions he said he greatly owed his preservation; for it was he who had prevailed on the captain to lower a boat, to discover what that strange object was floating on the waves.

He continued, there was something about Lieutenant Mordaunt he could not define, but which had the power of irresistibly attracting his respect, if not affection.

His story he believed was uncommon, but he had not yet heard it all, and had no time to repeat it, as he was writing in great haste.