ship on the 23rd, and repelled Arab marauders before making sail the next day. On the 28th Peacock was off Muscat when she encountered the sloop-of-war Sultan under the Muscat flag, and under the command of Mr. Taylor. Said bin Sultan later recovered the guns that had been thrown overboard and shipped them to Roberts free of charge. Peacock later obtained this letter:I certify that during the period I have navigated the Arabian coast, and been employed in the trigonometrical survey of the same, now executing by order of the Bombay government, that I have ever found it necessary to be careful to take nocturnal as well as diurnal observations, as frequent as possible, owing to the rapidity and fickleness of the currents, which, in some parts, I have found running at the rate of three and four knots an hour, and I have known the Palinurus set between forty and fifty miles dead in shore, in a dead calm, during the night. It is owing to such currents, that I conceive the United States ship of war Peacock run aground, as have many British ships in previous years, on and near the same spot; when at the changes of the monsoons, and sometimes at the full and change, you have such thick weather, as to prevent the necessary observations being taken with accuracy and the navigator standing on with confidence as to his position, and with no land in sight, finds himself to his sorrow, often wrong, owing to a deceitful and imperceptible current, which has set him with rapidity upon it. The position of Mazeira Island, is laid down by Owen many miles too much to the westward. Given under my hand this 10th day of November, 1835. S. B. Haines. Commander of the Honorable East India Company's surveying brig To sailing master, John Weems, U. S. Navy. A second attempt at negotiation with Cochin-China failed as Roberts fell desperately ill of dysentery; he withdrew to Macao where he died 12 June 1836. William Ruschenberger, M.D., (1807–1895) commissioned on this voyage, and gives an account of it up until 27 October 1837 when Peacock anchors opposite the city of Norfolk, Virginia, after an absence of more than two years and a half. Exploration expedition and fatePeacock'' joined the United States Exploring Expedition in 1838 until getting stuck on a bar of the Columbia River in Oregon. She broke