ately taken the passengers and goods land in an instant, and all are quickly out of the reach of the next wave. A flat sandy beach is generally chosen for landing on, and that of Arica is particularly adapted for the balsa, as a boat cannot approach it within a considerable distance. The balsa will easily carry three passengers, besides the person who guides it, and is employed in conveying the merchandise from the vessels to the shore. Large quantities of dollars, and bars of silver, are also shipped off by means of this slender conveyance.

The town of Arica is one of those places so favourably situated in geographical position as to be destined at some period to rise into importance. Hitherto it has suffered much from the evils of war; and the strife of parties, contending for the reins of government, has carried sorrow and desolation into its streets. The following extract from a little work on South America, published a few years ago by Captain Hall, affords a good picture of its condition, which even these years have but little improved :

7th of June. We anchored off Arica about mid-day, and on landing found the town almost completely deserted, and exhibiting in every part marks of having been recently the scene of military operations. The houses had been broken open and pillaged, the doors were mostly unhinged and gone, the fur. niture was destroyed, the shops and store-houses were empty. The first house we went to was that of the person styled governor: he was stretched on a mattress laid on the floor, for no bed-stead or other vestige of furniture was left; and he was suffering under the cold fit of an ague. His wife and daughter were in an adjoining room, where they had collected a few friends; but they looked most disconsolate and miserable. The town had been attacked by a patriot force, and had, as usual, suffered by being made the scene of conflict. Most of the people had fled to the interior, and the empty streets and houses gave a silent desolation to the place, which was very striking. Such of the inhabitants as were obliged to remain, either from sickness or from other causes, were reduced to severe privations. We saw some families that had not a table nor a bed left, nor a chair to offer us when we entered; and the governor's wife declared she had not a change of dress: her daughter was in the same distress; a pretty little round-faced modest girl, wnose attempts to tie a piece of a handkerchief round her neck, in the absence of all her wonted finery, was affecting enough. The people in general were silent, with an air of deep-settled anger on their countenances. That species of grief which breaks out in fretfulness and complaint is not characteristic either of the Spaniards or their descendants; and I have invariably observed amongst both a great degree of composure in their sorrow.

An English gentleman, who was passenger in the Conway, having letters to deliver to a Spanish merchant, we hunted long for him amongst the desolate streets, and at length learned that he, like the rest, had fled to the interior. We had some difficulty in getting mounted, but at length set off in quest of the Spaniard up the valley of Arica, the country round which is, in the truest sense of the word, a desert; being covered with sand as far as the eye can reach, without the slightest trace or hope of vegetation. The ground is varied by high ridges, immense rounded knolls, and long flat steppes, and far off, we get occasional glimpses of the lower ranges of the Andes, but, high and low, they are all alike—one bleak, comfortless, miserable, sandy waste. The colour of

the ground is sometimes black, generally of a dark brown, and here and there a streak of white occurs; but nothing more barren, forlorn, or uninhabitable, was ever seen. Nor can it be well conceived without being witnessed; at least all the ideas I had formed of such a scene fell infinitely short of the reality, which had the effect of depressing the spirits in a remarkable degree, and inspiring a horror which it is difficult to describe or account for.

In the middle of the valley ran a small stream of water, accompanied in its course through the desert by a strip of rich green, infinitely grateful to the eye, from the repose it afforded, after looking over the surrounding country. The road was judiciously carried amongst the trees, near the margin of the stream; and so luxuriant was the vegetation, that we fairly lost sight of the neighbouring hills amongst the great leaves of the banana, and the thick bushy cotton trees, the pods of which were in full blossom.

Being in quest of adventures, we rode up to the first house we came to, which we found occupied by a respectable old Don, a merchant of Arica, who had been totally ruined by the recent events of the war. He described the battles to us, and in very affecting terms recounted his own misfortunes, and, what seemed to distress him more, the loss of a great quantity of property belonging to others, entrusted to his care. His family were about him, but they were equally destitute; and the picture was every moment heightened by some little touch of distress, too trifling to be described, or to be thought much of at a distance. There is a romantic or picturesque sort of interest which belongs to well-described distress, that has no existence in the reality. In the one case, a multitude of small well-told circumstances, by giving force and apparent truth of effect to the imaginary picture, render it pleasing; but the very same circumstances, when actually witnessed, produce a totally opposite emotion. The universal look of sorrow, for example, the total discomfort, the pitiable make-shifts, the absence of ease and cheerfulness, the silence, the disordered aspect of every thing, the misplaced furniture, the neglected dress, and innumerable other details, all produce at the time a painful degree of commiseration for the sufferers, widely different from that pleasing sort of pity which description excites.

After a long search, we discovered the house of the Spaniard we were in quest of, an elderly man, who laughed and joked about the recent disasters in a manner that at first surprised us exceedingly; but we soon saw that it was the wild mirth of despair, a sort of feverish delirium; for he, too, was utterly ruined and broken-hearted, and soon relapsed, from the excitement our presence had caused, into a gloomy despondency. Whilst he and the gentleman who had brought him letters were discussing their business, I made acquaintance with a pretty little brown damsel, upon whom the distress of the times had fallen but lightly, for she smiled through all, and seemed very happy. She was a clever and conversable person, but resisted, with great adroitness, all our attempts to make out in what relation she stood to the master of the house, leaving us in doubt whether she were his wife, his mistress, his daughter, or his maid. She showed us over the beautiful garden and dressed grounds round the house; and we were well pleased to have our thoughts taken off the painful stretch in which they had been kept all day by the contemplation of so much wretchedness and unmerited calamity.

On returning to the town, we paid a visit to the curate, who showed us the church, which had been sacrilegiously broken open: the whole place, in fact, excited such a feeling of horror, that we were very glad to get on board again, to a scene of order, and peace, and comfort.

The promontory of Arica, a sketch of which we have given, is

one of those few headlands on the coast of Peru that resemble in some degree the white cliffs of our own coast. It is easily distinguished at a great distance from sea, and forms an excellent guide to the anchorage before the town.

SIR,

ON THE INVENTION OF HADLEY'S QUADRANT.

To the Editor of the Nautical Magazine.

You have reprinted in your third number, (p. 161,) a letter, which appeared in the Portsmouth Herald, and which renewed the claims of Godfrey to the honour of being the real inventor of Hadley's quadrant. The story is old, and yet I am not aware of any work, in which it has been examined as completely as it deserves. My failure may be occasioned by a limited acquaintance with books on navigation, but there may be some among your readers, whose knowledge of them is not more extensive than my own. The spread of science has been rapidly increasing of late years among members of the Navy, but they have been led to cultivate those parts with the greatest industry, from which practical utility is to be derived. This must be so: the historical department is comparatively of little importance to the active seaman, whose profession gives him no leisure for questions of speculative curiosity, and who, if he had leisure, could seldom possess the means of pursuing such inquiries. It may not, therefore, be superfluous for a landsman to offer you a few remarks, which have occurred in investigating the origin of the most useful astronomical instrument, which was ever put into the hands of a mariner. I confess that I feel deep interest in the question; there are others, who, probably, are not indifferent to it; and the discussion is the more pleasurable, because it affords the opportunity of doing justice to the ingenuity and originality of the American contriver, while it establishes the priority of the English invention.

John Hadley, Esq., was an active member of the Royal Society, and we are particularly indebted to him for improvements in the construction of astronomical instruments. He was one of the first who made any great progress in grinding mirrors for reflecting telescopes, and in 1731 he brought forward the most important invention of his quadrant. The account of it was read before the Royal Society on the 13th of May, and was published in the 420th number of the Philosophical Transactions. In the beginning of the following March, a person of the name of Plank professed to have invented a similar instrument, but it was so evidently taken from Hadley's, that he gained no share in the honour which he endeavoured to invade. Indeed, the following entry appears in the Journal of the Royal Society: "March 15, 1732. Mr. Hadley communicated a postscript to his description of the new instrument for taking angles: which being read, he was ordered