CAPTAIN AND MATE.

Captain Dalgarno arrived in Aberdeen on Tuesday, and proceeded to Buxburn, where his eon and daughter bad lived since his departure. His health is still very delicate, owing to the extraordinary privations to which he had been exposed, and his medical adviser has forbidden him to speak to any one on the subject of the wreck, as any recurrence on his part in the sad event always brings on a nervous attack. Captain Dalgarno, however, states that so soon as he is sufficiently recovered it is his intention to prepare a full statement of the wreck, and of the events which followed it, and this statement will be given to the public. lie says the sufferings which the survivors endured were incredible, and it would be useless for him in his present weakened state to attempt to give any idea of them. He, however, wishes the following letter to be published, as giving the fullest information of the catastrophe which he is able to impart at the present time :—: — " Sir — Permit me to avail myself of your column? to express my thanks in the most public manner for the very greit kindness and attention shown to myself and fellow- sufferer of the shipwrecked Invercauld, by the British Consul, merchants, and shipmasters at Callao. upon our arrival there, after the most providential and miraculous rescue from a painful and lingering late. " The Invereauld, of which I was master, left London in January 1 864, for Melbourne, whi::h, after a favorable passage, we reached in So days. We left Melbourne in ballast for Callao, to take in cargo there for England. On our pas?age we encountered a most severe hurricane, and on the night of the 10th May, 1864, we struck on the N.W. end of the Auckland Island, in a small bay. If the vessel had struck '200 yards either side of the point on which she did strike, not a man would have been saved. Out of the crew, consisting of 2-5 all told, only nineteen reached the shore in safety. The surf was running very high, and the escape of the uineteen was most miraculous. So high and heavy was the surf that in a very short time the vessel went to pieces, and nothing beyond 2 lbs of biscuit were saved from the wreck. Everything in and belonging to the vessel was lost, including a medal presented to me in the year 1862 by the United States Government, for saving the lives of the crew of a water-logged vessel, and a telescope presented 10 me by the British Government in the same year, for saving the lives of the crew of a British vessel, helpless, and over which the sea was breaking in a manner which threatened her speedy destruction, both of which I valued most highly, as mementos of service which I had been enabled to perform to orother seamen. The island was barren of anything in the shape of food, beyond a few weeds and shell fish, which I could not at first eat, and from which little nourishment could be extracted. Providentially, we j found a supply of pure water. For a considerable time after we were thrown upon the island, we had not, and could not provide, any shelter from the piercing cold and heavy rains, and eventually we had only a poor covering constructed of seal skins, which we had succeeded in obtaining from seals, with difficulty and at intervals captured by us. After lingering on the island for about thirteen months, during which our privations and sufferings were such as I would not have thought to have survived, and during which 16 of the 19

originally saved died of starvation and cold, my mate (Andrew' Smith), a seaman (Robert Houlding), and I were saved from the same fate as had befallen the 16, by a vessel that had sprung a leak, and visited the island in the hope of obtaining assistance. At the time of our rescue we were most miserably reduced, and could not have survived much lon/pr. We were conveyed in this vessel, the Julian, of Pern, to Callao. The captain and officers of the vessel were most kind to us. On our arrival at Callao, the British Consul, the merchants, and shipmasters at Callao, a3 also Captain Cook, of the 40th Itesiment, then at Callao on his return to England from New Zealand, were most kind and handsome in their treatment to us. During the few hours intervening between our arrival ther^ and my departure thence in the mail steamer for England, they paid us every attention. The only means which I had of notinor events durinor our stay on the island was the margin of a fragment of a Melbourne newspaper, and a pencil which I had in my pocket at the time of the wreck. This I have preserved, and would furnish to the relatives jf the deceased seamen of the Tnvercauld some information of their deceased friends. " My desire to make as publicly and widely known as possible the general kindness which we met in our forlorn state "must be my excuse for trespassing on your space, and I remain, &c, " George Dalgarno."