The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1855-09-04 00:00:00

;56. SUPPLEMENT TO
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AND GENERAL COMMERCIAL ADVERTISER.

gratitude for even trivial benefits, and an
unbounded feeling of that sentiment for favours
of importance. nspired by it, he was unceasing
in the expression of his gratitude to all from
whom he had received benefits. Grateful to the
municipality which had educated him and
favoured his advancement—grateful to his father
for the sacrifices endured on his account—his
dream of youthful ambition was based on a desire
to vindicate the partiality evinced towards him,
and, full of this, he became a midshipman in the
French navy, and started on what promised to be
a brilliant career. Before he had passed the age
of boyhood, the son of the humble Rochefort
artisan had, by his ardour and promptitude in
action, secured for himself the proud distinction
of Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. Smitten
by the desire of earning fame in a good cause,
and in a true spirit of chivalry, while yet a mid-
shipman, he joined the expedition fitted out by
Lady Franklin to search for her lost husband,
courting danger, but declining to receive her pay
As an acknowledgment of the merit of this gallant
offer, the French Ministry of Marine promoted
him to a Lieutenancy, and with that rank he
joined the crew of the Prince Albert, and com-
menced the journal which forms the most in-
teresting feature of the two volumes now under
consideration. Like a true'Frenchman, he com-
mences his perilous voyage with sea-sickness, an
initiatory feature which must strike the majority
of our island " Salts" with some surprise, and
lead not a few of them to believe that his rank
must have been conferred for service in that
mythical branch of the naval force known as the
" Horse Marines ;" yet it was not so—the young
and ardent Bellot had been a sailor in the true
sense, and had seen and rendered good service on
the wave. He in the following good-humoured
fashion narrates
THE HUMILIATION OF SEA-SICKNESS.
4th June.— The Prince Albert pitches frightfully, and
will certainly carry away so:ne of her sticks at sea. Light
as a bird of the storm, like it she rolls on the crests of the
waves • and the more exact the comparison becomes, the
more I find myself out of sorts. I walk the deck ; but am
thrown violently against the bulwark. Alas !in vain I
try to conceal it from myself, lam seasick. 0 shame !
O despair ! I look round to see who are the witnesses of
my dishonour; fortunately I have none but 4ccomplices.
Mr. Leask and Mr. Hepburn, the only two whom this
fatal sickness spares, are not present. I wear myself out
in efforts to read and write, but can do neither. Yet I
have great need of application. Oh, the nothingness of
human nature ! Be the most remarkable man, the most
accomplished savant, be Arago, Lamartine, put your foot
on board a ship, and there you are reduced to naught, not
an idea left you. Du plus grand des humains voila ce qui
vous reste ! A shadow incapable of pronouncing anything
but inarticulate sounds. A smell of whiskey proves to me
that all my shipmates are not sick only from the motion of
the ship ; and that some of them, before becoming real
teetotallers, have been bidding a last farewell to the
powers of this world.
I bethink me of the pagan practice of invocation of the
sea, and offer to Neptune a sacrifice he cannot fail to ap-
preciate at its true worth. I cut off a superb beard, and
his wrath is appeased. Quos ego—at last I can admire, at
my ease, the northern coasts of Scotland, and the snow-
topped mountains reflecting the rays of the sun.

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Unceasing in his anxiety for the acquisition of
solid information, he possessed also a surprising
aptitude for the acquirement of knowledge, and
lost no opportunity of increasing his stores. For
this purpose he availed himself of every occasion,
where he could possibly do so, of securing intEr-