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THE GOLDEN FLEECE.

Under the Mizzen Mast;
A VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD.

BY N. ADAMS, D. D.

A NEW EDITION, GREATLY ENLARGED.

BOSTON:
PUBLISHED BY HENRY HOYT,
No. 9 Cornhill.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by
HENRY HOYT,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

To my youngest son,
Robert Chamblet Adams,
formerly
Captain
of Ship
Golden
Fleece,
by whose
skilful
navigation
and
filial love
this voyage
was
a source
of benefit
and will
be the occasion
of
continual
gratitude
to
God,
This volume is inscribed as a Memorial, with his Father’s love.

Preface to the First Edition.

A narrative of this voyage was prepared for the ‘Congregationalist’ at the request of the editors, and appeared in successive numbers of that paper. On application of the present publisher for leave to issue it in a volume, it has assumed the form in which it now appears, revised and enlarged. The manner in which it originated explains its miscellaneous and somewhat desultory character.

Preface to the Second Edition.

So much interest in this narrative has been expressed that the author has been led to insert in a new edition things which it would have contained in the first, had the design been to give more than a brief sketch of the voyage.

CONTENTS.

UNDER THE MIZZEN MAST.

I.
OUTWARD BOUND.

He travels, and I too; I tread his deck,

Ascend his topmast; through his peering eyes

Discover countries; with a kindred heart

Suffer his woes, and share in his escapes;

While Fancy, like the finger of a clock,

Runs the great circuit, and is still at home.

Cowper.

There are so many running to and fro, and knowledge is thereby so increased, that I doubted, at first, if my friends did well to ask me to write for publication an account of my voyage. But I considered that impressions made on every new observer add something to the already large information of intelligent readers, besides reviving agreeable recollections. The thought that I may suggest to some friend in need of long rest one means of finding it, or encourage him to adopt it, leads me to give, as requested, the following narrative.

The writer, having been ill in the early part of 1869, was advised by physicians and friends to try the effect of foreign travel; but in what direction it was difficult to decide. With every suggestion of experienced friends there would arise some association of fatigue in sight-seeing, of monotony in resting long in one place. Pleasant as it would be to nestle in some quiet nook in Switzerland, or to take up an abode in one of the Channel Islands,—Alderney, for example, where there would be much to gratify curiosity, and where the distance from the centres of information would not be great,—the thought of being confined to one place or even district of country, or of being tempted to visit interesting scenes, and especially to make the acquaintance of interesting men, awakened such anticipations of labor as to forbid any hope of restoration from that source.

A son of the writer was compelled in youth, by ill-health, to leave his studies and go to sea. In the fall of 1869 he received command of a commodious ship, the “Golden Fleece,” which sailed in October of that year for San Francisco, Hong Kong, and Manila. By the kindness of Messrs. William F. Weld & Co., the writer and two members of his family accompanied him as passengers.

Many were the questions to which these passengers required answers previous to their embarkation on so long a voyage. The gale of September, 1869, which levelled our Boston Coliseum, and damaged so many steeples, and made such havoc among poplars and other trees whose roots run near the surface, led to the inquiry, What were the ordinary chances of such gales at sea? This question was answered by producing the log-book of a recent voyage from Mexico, in which it appeared that the weather, day after day, was so free from any cause for fear that the impression was allowed to gain strength that storms were an exception in sea-faring life. As to the gale just mentioned, it seemed safer to be at sea at such a time, with sea-room, than under roofs and chimneys, or in streets.

October 28, 1869, the ship Golden Fleece left Pier No. 12, East River, New York, in charge of a tug, and dropped anchor in the stream until the next morning. Members of our family circle went with us till we came to anchor, when they went over the side into the tug, where one of them took a sketch of us with her pencil, completing a sketch already taken of our cabin and staterooms for friends at home. We finally saw them reach the wharf, when we ceased waving our adieus and repaired to the cabin to put ourselves in sea trim.

The sailors were in good condition. The Shipping Master who brought them on board, had told them that the Golden Fleece was a religious ship; no swearing or fighting is allowed; a minister is among the passengers; the captain is kind and would treat them well. He had collected a good set of men; and when they stood on the lower deck and the shipping master called their names and checked them on the capstan, it seemed to me that I had never seen so many good faces among so many sailors. None came on board intoxicated, but this was not strange seeing it was but the third hour of the day.

We weighed anchor at six o’clock the next morning. The pilot had charge and took us down to Sandy Hook. We heard bells on shore at Staten Island and supposed that they were ringing for church.

We saw the pilot boat coming for the pilot at noon. It took him from us, and we began our voyage. The hills of Neversink alone remained to remind us for a short time of home and country. Twenty or thirty sail started with us, but our good ship took the lead and kept it.

After dinner the two mates gathered the men on the main deck to divide them into watches. They were unknown to the mates by name, but as each chose a man he pointed to him. Being divided, they repaired to their bunks and changed from one side of the forecastle to the other according as they found themselves in either watch. It was touching to see them, each with all his worldly goods in his arms passing each other to their respective berths.

In two days after leaving New York we were in the Gulf Stream. We sailed through leagues of herbage which was borne from the shores by the Stream, and like us was going to sea. The ship rolled; and soon the wind freshened and we were in a gale. We had our first sight of “mountain waves,” so called; but they needed some imagination and a little fear to make them mountainous. They were enough however to make us uncomfortable. The gale lasted two days. We took the impression that such was to be the ordinary experience in the voyage,—discomfort and tediousness. But we were happy to find that it was not so; for, during the whole voyage, there were very few such experiences,—so infrequent, indeed, as to excite surprise when they came. The morning after the gale the weather was fine. Going on deck, we found that we had exchanged the sharp air of the latter part of October in New England for the temperature of the early part of June.

Soon we were in the Tropic of Cancer. It seemed like a new world. Never before had we looked upon such a sky. There was no stratification in the clouds, and nothing of the cumulus formation; but the surface of the sky was composed of innumerable fleecy things moving in the gentlest manner, as though they feared to disturb slumber. The gentle motion was just the thing to induce sleep. As we thought of the turbulent state of the elements the day before, the sky now looked like an army which had been dismissed. It seemed as though there was not wind enough to form a large cloud. The hammock was made fast, one end of it to an iron belaying-pin in the saddle of the mizzen mast, in the shade of the spanker, and the other end to the rail. A hammock meets you at every point with the needed support. It brought strange sensations of rest to lie and listen to the plashing of the water against the sides of the ship. The measured roll of the vessel now was pleasurable. There was an easy swing to the hammock, as though a considerate hand were keeping it moving. How much better this rest and peace than travelling in Switzerland, or being pent up in the Azores, or wandering through Italy, if one needs rest and at the same time change of place! To an overworked brain here is seclusion indeed. There is here no post-office, with its delivery three times a day, so welcome on shore; no newspapers; no door bell; no agents soliciting attention to new works, and begging you to put your name down and accept a copy, as though you had subscribed; no succession of engagements;

“No cares to break the long repose;”

no crowd of passengers, nor daily calculation as to the day of arrival; nor jar of machinery, as in a steamboat, making you feel, day and night, that somebody is laboriously at work; and, to crown all, seemingly no end to your vacation.

But those clouds in the tropics! You had thought, perhaps, heretofore, that only at night the heavens declare the glory of God. Perhaps you find that the book which you brought on deck to read, but which you have no desire to open, may have in it a fly-leaf, on which, as you lie in the hammock, with one knee raised for a writing-table, you may indite these dreamy lines:—

THE CLOUDS IN THE TROPICS.

Did we not think o’er ocean’s restless plain

To see embattled hosts, and feel the affray?

But lo! a truce is here, and gala-day;

Nor lines of march, nor rank and file remain.

The fleecy clouds move o’er the tranquil plain,

And fling their trade-wind signals to the breeze,

To Capricorn from Cancer, realm of peace!

They seek no martial order to regain,

But take some fancied likeness, one by one,

Or shape themselves in wizard groups of things;

No haste, nor deep designs, no jostling crowds.

The hosts are going home, their service done.

What sense of power the wide-spread quiet brings!

In calms or storms “His strength is in the clouds.”

The meteorology in the latter part of the Book of Job stood in no need of modern science to captivate the hearts of the worshippers of the true God. “Dost thou know the balancing of the clouds, the wondrous works of Him which is perfect in knowledge?”

The charm of sea-life in a sailing-vessel I found to be constant occupation of the mind without wearying it. At first it seemed a duty to read the periodicals which we brought with us, the new books reserved for the voyage, the choice articles in the quarterlies which had been commended to us. But for these we found no time. What charm could there be in Dante when a school of porpoises was in sight, each of them leaping out of water just for the pleasure of the dive back? If the mate called down the companion-way, “A sail on the lee-bow!” the paper-folder must keep the place in the uncut volume till you know all about her. It would be tedious waiting at a corner of a street ten minutes for a horse-car; but it was pleasant to wait an hour and forty minutes to come up with the stranger ahead, gaining upon her all the time, meanwhile watching the flying-fish which the ship started on the wing, or going forward into the bows and looking over to see the ship dash through the waves, with “a bone in her mouth,” till suddenly the main topgallant-sail splits, and so fulfills the expectation expressed for the last five days that it could not long survive; and now, as it is the change of watch, and all hands are on deck, what could be more interesting than to see twenty-eight of them take in the old sail and bend the new one, then line the side of the ship with their curious faces to inspect the bark which we have now overtaken. She is the “Doon of Ayr,” one hundred and six days from Japan for New York, and as she was tacking we came so near that one might throw a biscuit on board. The captains of the bark and the ship had time for a few words of inquiry and information; then the two wanderers on the deep parted company, and watched each other for half an hour, and sighted each other, no doubt, occasionally, for an hour and a half, till each became to the other a speck. You have long ago forgotten your book, your journal, and magazine. This event, and its many interludes, are more interesting to you than a battle in Lord Derby’s Homer; it is practical life; you begin to feel that everything which you enjoy will be without the intrusion of periodical engagements, and you feel surprised that no such engagements now demand your thoughts.

Among the incidents at sea which give a charm to life, one is, Speaking a vessel. This is a metaphorical expression, retained from the former days before signals were used in conversation, and when vessels had to come near enough to each other for the speaking to act its part. We had been out five or six days, when a sail was descried on the starboard bow. It proved to be a bark; and we were as glad to see her as though we had met an old friend in a foreign land. The bark soon hoisted her ensign, which was the same as raising your hat in passing. We hoisted ours, which was a signal of recognition. The bark ran up four flags, which we recognized by the spyglass as 6 9 5 7, showing her number in the book to be 6957. Turning to it, we read “Sachem.” We ran up 4 5 9 1, our number in the book. The bark displayed 5 6 2 8, which we found to be “Salem.” We showed 4 7 8 2,—“New York.” The bark gave 6 8 7 4,—“Zanzibar.” We returned 2 1 8 0,—“California.” The bark showed 6,—“six days out.” We did the same. The bark showed numeral pendant,—this meaning “longitude,” and with it 54 38. We replied with 54 30,—our calculation. The bark then dipped her ensign, hauling it down half way, then raising it again. This was done three times. We did the same, which was equivalent to “good-bye” on either side, and lifting the hat; we added 6 3 8 9, meaning, “Wish you a pleasant voyage.” The answer was, 5 7 8 3, “Many thanks.”

These courtesies at sea are pleasant. Coming up with the vessel, or she and you drawing near in passing, reading the numbers by the spyglass, and arranging all the signals, is an agreeable occupation for the larger part of two hours, including the departure of the vessels from each other, as though friends were parting, leaving the ocean more a solitude than before.

Meeting vessels, or passing them at a distance, exchanging signals, making out their numbers, bring remote parts of the earth suddenly to mind. Thus new trains of thought succeed each other entirely disconnected. I always enjoyed exercise on horseback for one principal reason,—that on horseback you cannot long pursue one train of thought. Your conjunctions are disjunctive. If you purpose to make out your evening lecture on horseback, your attention is so frequently taken by something in the road, or by the action of the horse, that you probably come home without any connected plan. So at sea. The occasional sight of a sail is an illustration of the charm of sea-life as having complete possession of your thoughts without leaving you long at liberty to pore over a subject. If you meet a Norwegian bark, and the captain tells you he is twenty-four days from Buenos Ayres, there is Norway and Buenos Ayres for your meditation, and perhaps for your statistical or geographical inquiry. If the “Queen of the Pacific,” eighty-seven days from Macao for London, comes in sight, there is another chapter in the world’s great miscellany. That sail yonder proves to be the “Hungarian,” from Saguenay, twenty-one days out, bound to Melbourne, with lumber. You have another illustration of commerce binding together the ends of the earth. You soon excuse those friends of yours at home who commiserated you on the prospect of a long, monotonous sea-voyage. Where is the monotony? Not in the ship’s clock, which enumerates every hour and half-hour by a system of horology altogether different from shore time-pieces; not in the boatswain’s “Pumpship” at evening, when twelve or fifteen men entertain you with a song. Every tune at the pumps must have a chorus. The sentiment in the song is the least important feature of it; the celebration of some portion of the earth or seas, other than here and now: “I wish I was in Mobile Bay,” “I’m bound for the Rio Grande,” with the astounding chorus from twenty-eight men, part of whom the fine moonlight and the song tempt from their bunks, is an antidote to monotony.

The sailors were a merry set. Though only half of the crew—that is, one watch—were required each night at the pumps, all hands at first generally turned out because it was the time for a song. It was a nightly pleasure to be on the poop deck when the pumps were manned, and to hear twenty men sing. When making sail after a gale, the crew are ready for the loudest singing, unless it be at the pumps. For example, when hauling on the topsail halyards, they may have this song, the shanty man, as they call him, solo singer, beginning with a wailing strain:

Solo: O poor Reuben Ranzo! (twice)

Chorus: Ranzo, boys, Ranzo!

Solo: Ranzo was no sailor! (twice)

Chorus: Ranzo, boys, Ranzo!

Solo: He shipped on board a whaler! (twice)

Chorus: Ranzo, boys, Ranzo!

Solo: The captain was a bad man! (twice)

Chorus: Ranzo, boys, Ranzo!

Solo: He put him in the rigging! (twice)

Chorus: Ranzo, boys, Ranzo!

Solo: He gave him six-and-thirty— (twice)

by which time the topsail is mast-headed, and the mate cries, “Belay!”

When the mainsail is to be set, and they are hauling down the main tack, this, perhaps, is the song:—

Solo: “’Way! haul away! haul away! my ro-sey;

Chorus: ’Way! haul away! haul away! Joe!”

the long pull, the strong pull, the pull altogether being given at the word “Joe;” then no more pulling till the same word recurs.

When hauling on the main sheet, this is often the song, sung responsively:

Shanty man: “Haul the bowline; Kitty is my darling.

Crew: Haul the bowline, the bowline haul!”

That no one may think of me above that which he seeth me to be, or that he heareth of me, let me say that I find, on inquiry, that the “main tack” is the line which hauls down that corner of the main sail which is toward the wind; called, therefore, the “weather clew.” The “main sheet” hauls the other corner of the main sail; called, therefore, “the lee clew.” Why a rope should be called a sheet is a piece of nautical metonymy which it would be difficult to explain. “Larboard” and “starboard” were formerly used to designate respectively the left and the right side of the ship, standing aft and looking forward; but the two words, so much alike, were not always readily apprehended, and so were changed to “port and starboard.” Why the word “port” is used, does not appear; nor can any one tell why “Reuben Ranzo” is associated with one of the long pulls; if there be any philosophy in it, or historic association, it is as deep as the sea, or hopelessly lost.

After singing at the pumps in good weather when there was not much work, the men would have some amusement. Sometimes it was “Hunt the Slipper.” Then, again, two men sat down opposite each other, their hands and feet tied, and a capstan bar was run through each of the two men’s arms, behind him. The two would push each other with their feet till one would lose his balance, and fall over; then, being helpless, he was at the mercy of his comrade’s feet till he begged for quarter. These games were interspersed with declamations. We had some of Macauley’s “Lays of Ancient Rome,” “Spartacus,” “My name is Norval.” The merry laugh and the clapping of hands at the declaimers, and, now and then, the youthful voice of a boy reciting his piece from Henry Clay, or a story from the “Reader,” beguiled many an evening in the tropics.

On crossing the line, one evening when we were on the poop deck, we were startled by a voice on the lower deck, “What ship’s that?” The captain replied. The voice answered, “I shall call upon you to-morrow; I have an engagement this evening.” At 3, P. M., the next day, being Saturday, we were summoned on deck by one of the sailors, who announced that Neptune was coming on board. All at once we saw a grotesque figure swinging in the air over the water, half-way up to the main yard, two of the sailors pulling him in. He came on board, wet from his waist; and there came also over the sides a female figure and a young man. They came to the front cabin door, and saluted the captain, who stood ready to receive them. Neptune had on spectacles made of a tin can, epaulets of the same, buskins made of duck, long hair of rope-yarns, a duck tunic, and a girdle of twisted ropes. Mrs. Neptune had on a long duck mantle, her face blackened with burnt cork, and a large fan made of wood, and covered with sail-cloth; she used it gracefully. The son bore his father’s trident, which was a four pronged iron, called “the grains,” used for spearing sharks. He, also, was fantastically dressed. They made obeisance to the captain, who welcomed them on board in a short speech. They then repaired to a booth fitted up as a sort of marquee, flung up the sides, and called a young man from the crew. They asked him if he ever crossed the line before; then set him in a barrel, with his feet out, inquired his name, where from and whither bound, and as he opened his mouth to answer, they inserted the paint brush filled with soap and lime, with which the son was lathering him, who then produced an old saw fixed in a piece of wood for a sheath and handle and shaved him. Neptune then ordered him to be washed; when four men took him and dipped him into a barrel of water. This they did to three young men. They then came up to our deck and saluted us. The captain informed them that we were all liege subjects of Neptune and needed not to be sworn. They then wished us a pleasant voyage,—Mrs. N. taking her husband’s arm, fanning herself gracefully,—and they withdrew. While it was a successful masquerade, well sustained in all the parts,—the boys consenting to be hazed conscious that they were contributing something to the dramatic poetry of sea-life,—it was easy to see that it was capable of abuse. The officers saw that they should be careful how they allowed this liberty. To an invalid at sea these things are medicine; and, as I am writing in the interest of some who may betake themselves for the first time to sea in a sailing-ship for health, I would say that they must wait till they are in circumstances to find how “dulce est desipere in loco,” how pleasant it is at sea to be even gamesome upon occasions.

One day as I lay in the hammock I found myself in a revery; my eye being fixed on a bright, new rope which appeared among the running rigging. I mention it as an illustration of the frames of mind which steal upon an invalid passenger, especially in a sailing-ship, because undisturbed there by a crowd, or by the noise of steam and its machinery. Would any one think that a single halyard among five or six others could bring to mind Burke’s treatise on the “Sublime and Beautiful”? But it was even so. I found my eye going up the new rope in admiration at the perfect regularity in the twist of the strands. An artist cannot always combine the hempen yarns with the exactness which the ropemaker’s wheel gives them. My eye went from the new rope to the old ones; all had the same perfect twist throughout the ship. The ropes, from belaying-pin to truck, the signal halyard and the hawser, seemed instinct with “the beauty of fitness,” to borrow a term from the above-mentioned writer,—a common window-sash, with its parallelograms of panes, serving that great genius for an illustration.

“Thus pleasure is spread through the earth

In stray gifts, to be claimed by whoever shall find.

Thus a rich loving-kindness, redundantly kind,

Moves all nature to gladness and mirth.”

I cannot forget the simple pleasure which this meditation on a rope gave me, carrying me back to youthful days in my native place, and to the ropewalks there, the swift spindles, the horse in the cellar turning the wheel, the spinners, each with a bunch of hemp around him hitching it to the spindle, then walking backwards, paying out the hemp through his hands with judicious care, the rope all the time growing lengthwise, down the walk. It used to be a wonder to me how the horse in the cellar, going about on the tan, could twist the twine at the end of the bridge as accurately as it was twisted at the spindle. Unconscious influence, remote causations, continents, oceans, years, intervening between the agent and the effect of his example and words, were illustrated by the horse in the ropewalk; and the revery would have been protracted, had not a vessel ahead caught my eye. Coming to my senses I thought of Dean Swift’s satire on Robert Boyle’s pious and sentimental writings, which the Dean had to read in the hearing of Lady Berkeley, whose simplicity and enthusiasm he was pleased to ridicule, in revenge for the task imposed on him, under the guise of mimicking Mr. Boyle, in the famous piece, “Meditations on a Broomstick.”

But few things have so pleasing an effect in solving the kinks in one’s brain as to lie in a hammock on deck at sea far away from care, and let the fancy like the poet’s river “wander at its own sweet will.” This wandering would have continued, had I not been startled by descrying as aforesaid a vessel ahead, hove to, directly across our course, under short sail, her jib-boom gone, all looking as if she was in distress and trying to intercept us for relief. We began to consider how many we could accommodate in case she proved to be in a sinking condition; how our provisions would hold out; and other prudential questionings; which were soon dissipated by finding that she was a whaler with a whale alongside, a man standing on him cutting in, and the rest of the crew, some of them, hoisting up the pieces, and others trying them out. This episode in practical life contrasted well with the revery with which the forenoon begun, making with it a good illustration of the variety in sea-life.

It had rained in torrents one night, and it kept on till nine o’clock the next day. The sailors stopped the lee scuppers, and soon the deck had several inches of water on the lee side. The ducks were released and thought their paradise regained. The sailors could not resist the opportunity to do a little washing; so flannel shirts and other articles of apparel came forth into the common tub, the main deck; being trampled on by bare feet instead of the more laborious process of the washing-board. The sturdy limbs bared up to the knees showed fine sets of muscles, enough to excite the admiration of an artist pursuing anatomical studies. After the sailors had finished, they turned their attention to the pigs, which were severally walked into the water on two legs by the men, when they were chased and knocked about and scrubbed, till, by their looks, they made you believe the saying of the market-men that ship-fed pork has no superior. There was no monotony here.

But there was monotony soon in the doldrums. These are a region near the equator, between the north-east and south-east trades, where calms and rains abound, puffs of wind varying in direction every half-hour, trying to the sailors, disappointing the captain’s hopes. He yearns for steam; even an old captain will resolve, for the hundredth time in his life, that he will never go to sea again; he jumps on his hat and whistles for the wind. Then a breeze springs up, and he rubs his hands, and thinks that, after all, his ship is better than a steamer, till, in half an hour, she is almost motionless.

Then is the time for the sharks to appear. They are slow creatures and cannot keep up with a good sailor; so in calms they come and lie alongside. The little pilot-fishes, the curious attendants of the shark, directing his attention to food, are with him. The grains are thrust at the shark; and, if they fasten in him, a bend of a rope around his tail brings him on board. Sailors have great spite against sharks; they may show tenderness to other creatures, but for sharks they have no mercy. They will use their sheath-knives about his nose, and disfigure him in all conceivable ways. Their theory is that a shark never dies till sunset. Sharks are hard to kill. You may cut off their heads and tails, and disembowel them, and even then the trunk will thrash the deck at so lively a rate that his executioners will have need to jump about for safety. In contrast with the shark, the dolphin seemed to me for beauty to verify all that poets have said of him. It is my belief that a dolphin’s mouth is as perfect a curve as nature ever produces. His tints, when dying, are no fiction. Two sword-fish were caught one day, and the rapidity with which they were stripped of their flesh, and their back-bones hung up to dry, rivalled the skill and speed of young surgical practitioners.

THE MIZZEN MAST. A DREAM.

Few if any need to be informed that the mizzen mast is the hindmost of the three masts of a ship. The mizzen mast of the Golden Fleece is a solid stick, but the foremast and mainmast are built. In this section of the country it is not always easy to find trees large, tall, straight enough for the foremast and mainmast of a large ship. A smaller one will answer for a mizzen mast. The foremast and mainmast are specimens of ingenious mechanical work, eight or nine pieces in each of them making a circumference of sixty-two inches. Iron bands gird these heavy staves, which are grooved and jointed together. There are five hoops of broad iron, five feet apart. The mainmast being in the centre of the ship is continually scraped, oiled, and varnished. The iron hoops are painted vermilion, which sets off the color of the spruce wood. It is pleasant to look on the manufactured masts which show what human skill can do; for example, a mainmast that can support those immense yards which when lowered to the deck you can scarcely believe are each of them itself less than a mast, for it supports a huge weight of canvas stretched upon it.

The mainmast holds up a top mast also with its yards and sails, a top-gallant mast with yards and sails, the royal, and sometimes a sky sail. Then the foremast also, which bears the same burden and is also a manufactured thing; as you think of it, a hundred feet ahead of you, pioneering your way and taking the first brunt of the sea, you cannot help regarding it as the most heroic of the three masts. Inspiring as the sight of these always is, I cannot withhold from the mizzen mast peculiar attachment. As already stated, one end of the hammock is fastened to it, the other end to the rail; on one side or the other there is almost always a shade from the spanker, a principal fore and aft sail which swings from it.

Lying here about Thanksgiving time I was musing on the mizzen mast, when I fell asleep, but my musing continued. The mizzen mast, once a live tree, seemed now to be a living person; it appeared to be soliloquizing, though now and then it seemed to be addressing an audience, and again it was whispering to me. I fancied it saying thus:—

“I was once a shoot which a fox could tread down; then a sapling. I grew on the side of a hill in the Aroostook region. The Indian names of my native lakes and rivers have been for so long a time disused that I cannot now distinguish between the Chern-quas-a-ban-to-cook, the Ah-mo-gen-ga-mook and “the far-winding Skoo-doo-wab-skook-sis.” Once these names were familiar to me. Now I wander with you who sail with us in the wilderness of ocean. You sympathize with me, perhaps, in my exile from the stillness of nature. You are tempted to fancy me contrasting my rough life with the silence in which I grew. Years passed over me and my kindred in the untrodden forest; what ornithology I might describe; what songs I might recite; tell what eagles visited my top; what rare plumage is remembered as having showed itself in my foliage. Squirrels gambolled on my limbs, woodpeckers ransacked my sides for their prey. Many a woodbine has climbed into me, lived its short life, and turned crimson under the first touch of frost.

One day men came beneath me with axes, measured my girth, looked up to my top. Great was my fall. I lay on the ground, my top was brought to a level with my root. I became a mere trunk, was borne to the shipyard, my foot set in the hold of this ship then new, and soon I was made ready for my vesture of canvas in place of buds and blossoms; I began a new life among the winds on the seas. Now I am sailing about the world; I have been many times round Cape Horn, am familiar with the lightnings off the River Plate, have compared the gales around the Cape of Good Hope with those of the Horn; know the latitudes where the trade winds begin and where they cease. I am a favorite resort of passengers in a sailing ship. I stand aloof from the main deck where work is all the time going on and there is much passing to and fro. The house,” (here it seemed to be addressing an audience) “which is the raised covering of the cabin, is there, extending perhaps one third the whole length of the ship, affording on its top a place for promenading. From me swings the spanker, a large fore and aft sail, helping the wind to balance the ship and much of the time throwing a shade; and there is almost always a current of air stirring beneath it. Under me and in the spanker’s shade the passengers spend a large part of every pleasant day reading, writing, conversing, enjoying the ocean scenes. Every pleasant evening is sure to gather them under me. My length runs down through the forward cabin where I am cased in. There the preacher or reader stands, with a congregation of about thirty. I am therefore a witness of a large part of a passenger’s experience at sea. His impressions and reflections, his reading, his writing, his conversation, his journal, may properly be dated under me.

It might be supposed” (here it seemed to relapse into soliloquy,) “that the shipbuilder had ideality playing about him when he placed me, a tree of the wood, in the most interesting position, to be a centre of social life, a shelter to meditative hours, identifying myself with the choicest moments of sea life, retaining a magnetism which memory is destined to feel in coming years. Such is my origin and early history, and such the associations, in memory, with the mast under which most of the impressions to be recorded here, no doubt, by one of our passengers will be received. If his readers (should he have any) shall be so happy as to find themselves under a mizzen mast at sea, let it shed the healing, healthful influence on them which seem to be descending on the sleeper under my shade.”

This last remark, seeming to be such a personal allusion to myself, had the effect to startle me, and I roused myself, surprised at having been asleep, and I looked up to the mizzen mast to see who was speaking. It was the mate who that moment was saying, “Set the crojick;”[1] whereupon four sailors came to the belaying-pins where my hammock swung and began to loosen the buntlines. I went below to prepare myself for the Thanksgiving dinner.

THANKSGIVING.

We kept Thanksgiving, it having been appointed before we sailed, so that we knew the day. We dined at four, instead of our usual hour (half past twelve), and so we were at table part of the time with those at home. Our dinner was:—1. Oyster soup; 2. Boiled salmon and scalloped oysters; 8. Roast fowl; 4. Huckleberry pudding; 5. Apple pies of dried apple. Now, should any one envy us, or should his mouth water at such a bill of fare, let him know that oysters and salmon from tin cans are not the same as those fresh from Faneuil-Hall Market.

SATURDAY DINNER.

We may be said to have had a Thanksgiving dinner once a week. But the principal dish was not fowl. Far from it. It was salt fish; but probably no better meal from this article of food is ever served on shore. With every desirable vegetable, and some sparkling champagne cider which a thoughtful friend had placed among our stores, we were rivals with Ruth when she sat beside the reapers of Boaz in the harvest field, and he reached her the parched corn “and she did eat and was sufficed and left.” For dessert we had at that meal “roly-poly,” which is thin flour paste spread with apple sauce, then rolled together and boiled; this with sweet sauce flavored with vanilla made us for the time imagine ourselves on shore. We entertained each other at these feasts with the choicest anecdotes, which our repasts disposed us to call to mind and to relish; for example, instances of Mr. Choate’s ingenuity, as, when defending a sea captain charged with cruelty to his crew, he undertook to show that so far from being cruel he was eminently considerate, so much so that instead of searching the law books to find out, as the witnesses alleged, what punishments were allowable and could be inflicted with impunity, he was only guarding himself against the excessive use of legitimate discipline; “he read the books with paternal yearnings; he was a mild but firm parent;” and instead of keeping his crew on vile trash, tasteless, sometime loathsome, “think, gentlemen of the jury, of applying such words to the nutritious lob scouse and the succulent dandy funk!” How could the jury help saying as they presently did, Not guilty?

SAILOR’S FARE.

Perhaps the reader, if he be not already versed in the articles of luxurious food served to sailors, will be willing to have his curiosity gratified as he reads what are the component parts of lob scouse and dandy funk, the mention of which by the eloquent advocate helped him to clear his client, the captain.

“Lob scouse” is salt meat and potatoes cut small and stewed.

“Dandy funk” is hard bread broken up, soaked in water, mixed with molasses, and baked in pans. Why Mr. Choate should call it “succulent,” or lob scouse “nutritious,” it requires legal cunning to detect.

“Sea Pie” is lob scouse with dumplings in it, the meat not cut so fine; perhaps fresh meat. When a pig is killed the sailors the next Sunday generally have sea pie for dinner, made with fresh pork.

“Bread Hash” is hard bread and salt meat minced fine and baked.

“Potato Hash” is potatoes and meat minced fine and baked.

“Manavellings” are remnants from the cabin table, the boy’s treat.

APPLES AT SEA.

We mourned the disappearance of our apples. They began to decay three weeks after we left New York, and our steward was obliged to employ his ingenuity in finding ways to use them up. We thought with pleasure of the tropical fruits which we hoped one day to taste; but nothing, we felt sure, could take the place of a northern apple. We expected to miss it as much as Sydney Smith did his summer beverage, in a place which he lugubriously describes as being situated “five miles from a lemon.”

CAPRICES OF THE SEA.

The steward was passing from the galley to the cabin table with a plate of hash. A sudden lurch made him lose his balance. His arms went into the air and the hash left the plate and went in a body against the side of the ship where a coil of rope hung; and it remained fast, the coil forming an oval frame for it. We pitied the steward but did not weep for the hash. Some of us thought we could understand the action of a company of boys at a boarding school, who were asked in Lent what luxury they would each propose to forego during the season of fasting and humiliation as a religious offering. Slips of paper were given to them and in a little while were collected. Every one of the forty papers bore the word, Hash. Some of our company were so lost to a sense of propriety as to exult at the steward’s mishap.

RELIGIOUS ADMONITION FROM THE STEWARDESS.

We have a stewardess, Annie Cardozo, wife of the steward who is a Cape de Verd, Portuguese, man. She is an Irish woman, very talkative, of good disposition. She was fixing my mattress; I remarked that it was too low on the side next the room. “Well,” said she, pleasantly, “we must think of the Lord, he had no where to lie down.” She may have thought that I was querulous, which in the present instance was not the case; but I accepted the admonition.

DECISION IN A CAPTAIN.

One evening in the Gulf Stream just at dark the top-gallant sail was blowing adrift from the “gaskets,” (the ropes with which it was furled;) and the whole sail was likely to get loose. The captain said that it must be secured. The mate doubted if it was safe to send men aloft in such a gale. The captain replied that he had been obliged when he was before the mast to go aloft in worse weather. He could not spare the sail. The mate gave the order: “Go aloft, some of you, and make fast that top-gallant sail.” Six or eight men sprang into the rigging and soon the sail was furled.

The captain’s eye is necessarily the most of the time all over the ship. We were sitting on deck when the ship was laboring in a cross sea. He noticed that the main topmast stays quivered. The stays had within a few days all been “set up” for Cape weather, but these were not so taut as they should be. It was only a wakeful eye which would have noticed it. The remedy was applied at once. It is interesting to me as a father to hear the young captain spoken of by the sailors to each other as “the old man.” Had he a wife, though she were only eighteen years of age she would nevertheless be called “the old woman.” This made it less offensive to hear myself, though decidedly far from seventy, spoken of as “the old gentleman.”

THE NIGHT WATCH.

At night, or from eight P. M. the two mates take turns to be four hours each on deck, with or near the man at the wheel. They direct the steering according to the captain’s orders, oversee the ship, and report to the captain several times during the night as to wind and weather. Two of the crew keep a lookout in the bows two hours at a time watching against collisions and in some latitudes against ice. The law of the road, “When you meet turn to the right,” is the law at sea. The chances of collision are few. You wonder that you so unfrequently meet a sail, especially remembering the long list in every paper of arrivals, departures, vessels spoken. In thick weather, especially while on a coast, the danger increases and a sharp lookout is the rule.

FLYING FISH

I have seen at least a thousand in the last few weeks. They resemble the smelt, though larger. They start up before or near the ship in small flocks and fly fifty or a hundred feet. By taking wing though for short distances they are able to elude the dolphin, the swiftest of their pursuers, who wondering what has become of them, darts on ahead. Their escape by flying is probably as incredible to the dolphin as the sailors tell us it was to the mother of a sailor who was questioning him as to his experiences at sea. He told her many wonderful things, as, that a wheel of one of Pharaoh’s chariots came up on his anchor; that he saw a whale caught, in whose stomach was found a handkerchief with a Hebrew word on it which a minister on shore declared to be Jonah; that there are now fishes in the sea of Tiberias which have in their gills fluted pieces of pearl resembling money, by which name they are now called, and that some give them the name of “Peter’s pence,” supposing the fishes to be descendants of the fish which Peter drew from the sea. But when he described fishes flying in the air, taking wing before his ship, the faith of the listener gave way; the other stories, she said might be true, for they had a foundation in holy writ; but flying fish were too great a tax on her belief.—One was washed on board, whose wings, extended and dried, had a gossamer appearance so delicate that one might readily believe them to be the wings of something more delicate than a fish.

LOSING ONE’S SHADOW.

For about a week we have been directly under the sun. When we came under lat. 21° S. we could see nothing of our shadows at noon. Had we been ignorant of the cause we might have been in a frame of mind predisposing us to listen to German stories of a man’s selling his shadow to the evil one: for what had become of ours? Had we been of those ‘whose souls proud science never taught to stray far as the solar walk or milky way,’ we imagined what our speculations on this phenomenon would have been. One’s shadow certainly can never be less than in 21° S. Under our feet there was to each of us something like one of the clouds of Magellan.

THE CLOUDS OF MAGELLAN.

These we saw in the evening in the south-east, half way up to the zenith. They are two dark spots, one larger than the other, about twenty paces apart, not far from two yards broad. No stars appear in them. The telescope shows them to be openings into a milky way or paths of star dust, groups of heavenly bodies so many and so distant that their light is confused. Hence these openings in the bright heavens have the appearance of clouds, though they are not clouds; but the light which is in them is darkness, its excess confusing the irradiation.

SALT WATER BATHS.

You can have sea water brought to your room for sponge baths, or there is easy access to a room in the ship fitted up with all the conveniences for bathing. The men pour water through a hole on deck into a reservoir over head; pure sea water; the quantity making you remember the saying of Horace, ‘Dulce est detrahere acervo’,—It is pleasant to draw from a heap. In the Gulf Stream the water would suit those who must dip their razors into warm water. All who wish for cold baths will have them as they get further North. You have a sense of affluence in drawing on the Atlantic for your morning bath.

SEA BIRDS.

It is interesting to meet birds hundreds of miles from land. When the ship is going at her greatest speed, twelve or thirteen miles an hour, these birds fly faster, some of them forty and fifty miles, making you feel how they surpass man in all his means of speed. One is astonished at their quickness of sight. You throw pieces of paper, for example, overboard, and though you have not been able for half an hour to see a bird, straightway they will come one by one around you, but you cannot tell whence. Their sharpness of sight also is marvellous, shown in their discovering fishes beneath the surface of the water, even when the sea is troubled.

SOME OF THE CREW ALWAYS AT WORK.

A ship’s work is never done. All the time something is giving way and must be repaired; the sails are to be patched, ropes replaced, and day and night orders issue for taking in or making sail. None in particular are designated for ordinary work, but the order is given to the watch on deck: “Go aloft, some of you, and do this or that,” when they all spring into the shrouds; and when it is seen that enough are on their way the hindmost fall back.

In good weather, the sails which need mending are spread on the deck and subjected to the needle. The thimble instead of being on a finger is fixed on a leather “palm,” which is drawn over the hand and affords the means of giving a strong push. It is composing to sit by and watch the sewing, or to lie in your hammock soothed by the measured monotony of the stitching and the plashing water. It is doubtful whether anything furnishes an invalid with more complete repose than a life on board a well-appointed sailing ship.

SOUTH AMERICA IN SIGHT.

The captain sent a man aloft at six A. M. to look for land. In fifteen minutes he called down, Land ho! It was Roccas Keys, one of the eastern projections of South America, about four miles from us. The white rollers soon showed themselves, with rocks behind the breakers. It was a pleasant sight in the morning sun, a relief after seeing nothing for a long time but the seemingly endless waters. A current had set in, but we were still in fifty fathoms of water. After watching the breakers an hour they disappeared. At four P. M. the captain thinking that we were too near the shore to pass Cape St. Rocque and Cape St. Augustine, tacked for two and a half hours, which made him feel sure of clearing the land in the night.

SOCIAL LIFE AT SEA.

The twenty-fifth of November was a beautiful day in contrast to the probable state of the climate at home, and calling us all on deck. One of the passengers sat plying her needle on the chief signal flag, another writing, one enjoying the soothing influences of the day in his hammock, the captain fixing his signals with a contrivance for keeping them separate and easily handled. Soft airs were about us. The clouds showed that we were in the trade wind region. Instead of banks of clouds and thunderheads there were innumerable fleecy clouds, mostly small, giving a calm look to the heavens. We seldom see this for a long time on land. We are in all respects the larger part of the time as if we were in a pleasure boat. No doubt other ships would awaken as agreeable sensations, but we are much of the time impressed with the gracefulness of our ship’s motions. We are instructed that this is owing in part to the stowage. She is not too much “by the head” nor “by the stern;” yet, after all, there is sometimes an indescribable air of beauty in a craft which the wisest builder will fail to define or to account for, while every one sees and feels it. Wholly ignorant of niceties in the art of steering, I soon learned by the action of the ship that it made a difference in her behavior whether one man or another were at the wheel. Many a time have I been so impressed with the way in which the ship rode the waves that I have left my seat to see who was steering, and have found that Nelson was having his trick at the wheel. Nelson is a tall sailor, about fifty years of age, an American, not always as exemplary on shore for his temperate habits as at sea he is skillful in his profession. He has the eye and hand of a marksman in encountering groundswells, running through chop seas; making me think of the gallant manner in which some policemen help ladies cross the thoroughfares.

NIGHTS AT SEA.

For nearly a month we have had quiet nights. Sleep is as deep and dreams as natural as on shore. Bed time is at half past nine and breakfast at half past seven. Going to sleep or waking in the night knowing that a mate and fifteen men are up and round about you and will be succeeded once in four hours by others, it is not strange that you should have a feeling of repose. It is useless for you to have an anxious thought. You could not go up to the royals nor out to the jib in an emergency; these men will go for you. How would it do at home to feel that angels who excel in strength are in the dwelling, in the cars, being caused to fly swiftly to keep you in all your ways?

WATCHING THE WAVES.

We spent the afternoon on deck watching the waves, they being fairly entitled to the designation of billows. The sea was white with foam, though the day was fine; while round about the ship the eddying water presented numberless forms of beauty. These words by one of the poets are sometimes as true of sea water as of fresh:

“How beautiful the water is!

To me ’tis wondrous fair;

No spot can ever lonely be

If water sparkle there.

It hath a thousand tongues of mirth,

Of grandeur or delight,

And every heart is gladder made

When water greets the sight.”

Every now and then an enormous wave would break astern or about midship, like a mad pursuer compelled suddenly to give up the chase and die with a roar which seemed to tell what it would have been glad to do. It was Saturday afternoon, the time devoted by us at home to driving into the country; but the larger part of the afternoon went by unheeded while we were watching these frantic waters spending themselves one after another in their harmless wrath. There is more of pleasurable excitement in such a contemplation in a ship under sail than in driving; the sea air in fine weather giving exhilaration to the system which is in some degree a substitute for exercise. The ceaseless play of the water, never repeating itself in the same shape, interests the mind without fatigue, keeps attention awake by new surprises. We were at the mouth of the River La Plata, or “the River Plate,” as it is familiarly called, between Uragua and Paraguay, a region for disagreeable weather. Squalls, thunder and lightning, rain, everything which can make sea faring people uneasy, abound. But though we are nearly opposite the mouth of the river we are enjoying a perfect day. Still we are notified that we are in a region where we must not be surprised at sudden changes. Since a week after leaving New York we have been in exhilarating weather. All through November the thermometer has been at 60 or 70 in the cabin. On deck it has been cool enough, in the shade of a sail or under an awning. It was only the night before last that I felt the need of more than a sheet for a covering, though it was the fifth of December. The mere thought of sitting on a doorstep or piazza at home at this season to watch the stars, brought forcibly to mind the contrast of our respective climates. Home is 43 degrees north of the equator; we are now, Dec. 20th, thirty-seven degrees south of it; hence we are 43 + 37 = 80 degrees from home; and sixty miles being a degree we are 80 × 60 = 4800 miles from home, not reckoning the difference in our longitude.

We went to sleep with everything favoring the expectation of a peaceful night, but at midnight the tramp of feet on deck revealed that all hands had been summoned to take in sail. The noise made by the heavy boots of thirty men was not unlike the noise made by horses on being removed from a burning stable. The scene on deck that night must have been a good specimen of “River Plate weather,” judging from the description given of it by the officers. The captain said in a letter which he sent home:—

“At eleven o’clock a bank of clouds rose in the northern horizon with occasional flashes of lightning. As the clouds crept toward the zenith the flashes grew more frequent until they became incessant, playing over the whole of the north western sky accompanied by constant growls of thunder. Thinking a heavy squall was near I took in the royal and top gallant sails, hauled the courses up snug, had the topsail halyards and braces all laid down clear and kept the men standing by. When the clouds reached the zenith sharp flashes of lightning came at short intervals in addition to the constant display of heat lightning which had spread over the whole sky, keeping it in a perpetual blaze which I can compare only to a universal Aurora Borealis. Then it began to thunder in terrific peals with a continuous growl in the way of a running sub bass. I ordered all the cabin shutters to be closed tight that the flashes might not startle the sleepers, for it seemed as though the most brilliant day were alternating moment after moment with the blackest night. Then it began to rain. To use a sailor’s expression, “every drop was a bucketfull.” In the most literal sense, it poured. Every flash seemed the reopening of the sky, while the thunder had a combined sound of rattling and roaring, each of these noises vieing with the other, making me feel as though parks of artillery were crashing the reservoirs, bringing down their contents by floods. Withal, there was the phenomenon which landsmen are slow to believe, balls of fire resting on the trucks and yard arms, and called by sailors, “corpasants,” (a corruption of “corpus sancti”) these electric fires appearing to envelope the ship, availing themselves of all its points. All this was a combination of sights and sounds characteristic of the River Plate region. I thought every moment that a hurricane squall would burst upon us. It did blow hard. The wind changed entirely round the compass by spells, catching us aback two or three times, compelling us to brace the yards round, but the gale did not amount to anything serious. In a couple of hours the storm subsided. While it lasted it was appalling. All the powers of the air seemed to be in requisition to work some disaster.”

Some days later upon going on deck in the morning, the scene was a picture of desolation. A heavy gale was blowing and several sails had been stripped off by the winds. The mast and spars made me think of the nut trees in the country after a gale when the leaves are gone; the spars were hardly clothed with canvas enough to keep the ship on her way, the few sails which remained being furled, to save them; only some of the canvas about the bowsprit and foremast being spread, with the mizzen staysail, to prevent the ship from broaching to. Eighteen men were aloft securing the sails, the ship going only two or three knots. Some of the torn sails had been sent down on deck. I never desired more the skill of a draftsman that I might picture the appearance of some of the sails as they came down after the gale had spent its ingenuity in riddling them. The shapes of the rents could not have been contrived by human skill; the canvas was not merely torn, it was picked in pieces, mocking any attempt to bring it together and even to divine how its parts were ever related to each other. The way in which the sail cloth was dishevelled by the gale, laid out in shreds, every thread loosened from its neighbor, some parts of the sail mangled, other parts minced as no art of human fingers or mechanical skill could rival, made the sailors despair of any attempt to do mending in the premises. They wound large parts of a topsail together for scouring-rags, some of it for cleaning brass work and other uses, for which the riddling wind had made the duck surprisingly soft like flannel, and some of it like lint.

It seems fearful to lie so far removed from the habitable parts of the globe, a little company of human beings without neighbors, and with no means of help should we need it. Yet there are birds flying around us; some of them are resting on these waves. This inspires us with a feeling of safety. The sight of life in these creatures seems to be a connecting link between us and the living God. “From the ends of the earth,” literally, we cry to God when our hearts are overwhelmed by a sense of solitude. I am writing in a large easy chair, in which it requires some effort to preserve an upright position. The chair is made fast with rope yarns tying it to staples driven in to the floor; but for these I should go over. My inkstand is lashed with seizings to the swinging rest in front of me, diverting my attention from writing to the ink in the glass which at every roll of the ship climbs so nearly to an angle of forty-five degrees as to excite apprehension that it will spill. Ink is at best a source of mischief to all of us under the wisest precautions. What should I do just now should mine run over the floor? The stream would look as capricious as the wanderings of the children of Israel in the wilderness look on the map. I could not run for help, nor even stand, to call; I will put the cork in after dipping the pen when we are midway between a lee and weather roll. The girls are sewing as composedly as at home, one of them reading aloud from Dickens’ Mutual Friend. When I raise my eyes from my papers and look out of the window and see the water racing by us, white with foam, I need only the jingling of bells to make me fancy that I am in a sleigh. The man at the wheel keeps his post in his oil-cloth coat; I hear the pelting rain when the door is opened by the captain going up to ask “how she heads;” the gale is strengthening; we are nearing Cape Horn.

ALL NIGHT AWAKE.

The ship rolled so incessantly all night that I lay awake till morning. The carpenter has made me a berth board which raises the outer edge of my mattress so that as the ship rolls I am able to preserve an equilibrium. But everything in my room which could get loose was piled up in a promiscuous heap. For the first time for six weeks I did not appear at breakfast, but lay till 11 A. M. hoping to sleep.

EVENING SERVICE.

The gale lasted all day. In the evening we had religious services with the watch below. The captain read a chapter, made remarks, and called on me to follow. I told them how I had heard one of the boatswains singing, “Jesus sought me when a stranger,” in the hymn “Come thou Fount,” &c., written by Rev. Mr. Robinson, a Baptist minister in England, who, as a distinguished hymnologist of Baltimore told me, quoting from an English paper which he has preserved, departed from his early faith, but in after years when driving with a friend he heard singing and stopping to listen these words of his own hymn caught his ear:

“Jesus sought me when a stranger

Wandering from the fold of God;”

when Mr. Robinson, lifting his hands as in prayer, said, “I would give worlds if I could now feel as I did when I wrote that hymn.” The incident seemed to me a remarkable indicating of divine grace endeavoring to call home a wandering sheep to the Shepherd and Bishop of souls, by causing him to remember so forcibly his former religious hope.

CAPE HORN LATITUDES.

Dec. 14. At eight and a half o’clock, P. M. it is light enough on deck to read small print. The day breaks at two, and there is a long morning twilight; the sun rises at four. We have to-day passed 50° S. This is the beginning of the Cape Horn region.

To-day we have been running seven knots with a fair wind, and going in toward the coast, for several nautical reasons. At four P. M. we saw a dense cloud forming and in half an hour there came a heavy rain and fresh breeze, the ship going twelve knots, so fast that we shortened sail lest we should get out of the line of the Straits of Lemaire and run too near the Falkland Islands. The captain’s plan of steering for the coast proved as he expected, for now the southwest wind would have set us too far east.

RESUMING THE MINISTRY, AT SEA.

Dec. 19. Had services in the evening at seven by day light. It was the anniversary of my first sermon as Colleague pastor of the First Church at Cambridge, forty years ago. It was my first attempt to preach since February 14th. On account of uneasy motion in the vessel, sat and conducted the exercises. Did not feel the least inconvenience from the effort but slept quietly all night.

II.
CAPE HORN.

All places that the eye of Heaven visits

Are to a wise man ports and happy havens.

Teach thy necessity to reason thus:

There is no virtue like necessity.

Shakspeare: Richard II.

At six o’clock, A. M., Dec. 20, a man at the mast-head cried, “Land, ho!” We saw the highlands of Tierra del Fuego, about a hundred miles from Cape Horn. We lay on the water motionless. About a mile from us was a brig apparently bound the same way. The captain ordered a boat to be made ready; and the mate, one of the boatswains, and three sailors, rowed to her. She proved to be the brig “Hazard,” Capt. Lewis, of Boston, belonging to Messrs. Baker and Morrill, eighty days from Malaga, bound to San Francisco, with raisins and lemons. The visitors received much information, and gave papers,—which, though fifty-seven days old, were gladly received,—some buckwheat, and other things; and received kind tokens in return. The swell would often hide the boat from the ship and the ship from the boat, except the upper sails. In the afternoon the wind sprung up fair; soon we came close to, and the captains had conversation.

Tierra del Fuego lies south of Patagonia, separated by the Straits of Magellan. It has high hills, which, at a distance, look like domes. Many bays indent the coast, causing it to bend frequently. Between this district of country and Staten Land or Island, are the Straits of Le Maire, twelve miles broad. Entering the Straits with a fair wind and a strong current, on the morning of a bright, cool day, Dec. 21, we went at the rate of thirteen knots. We came alongside of a great patch of seaweed and kelp on which were eleven large birds. We had tacked or had been becalmed for almost a week, losing nearly five days. We therefore enjoyed our speed the more. The hills were picturesque in the variety of their shapes; their jaggedness and grouping were beyond imagination. One cluster was surmounted by an enormous stone, fluted like a sea-shell, looking as if it were placed there for a memorial purpose. There was another hill which terminated in the appearance of a man’s head, the face upward, the features regular, and so much resembling one of the sailors that it received his name. Flocks of wild ducks, twenty or thirty in each, albatrosses, cape hens, cape pigeons, penguins or divers, were abundant. These penguins float with only the head above water, and dive often; they all made the scene most lively. We sat or stood three or four hours enjoying the wild enchantment. It was worth to any one a voyage from New York. We saw no trace of an inhabitant. They are said to be of large stature, almost naked, their skin and flesh toughened by the climate. They do no tillage, but live on shell-fish and game. I shall always remember this region for its wild beauty and seemingly intense barrenness.

We came up with a New-Bedford whaler; the name “Selah” was on her quarter, whaleboats over her side, and men at the mast-head, looking for whales or seals. We also descried a large ship ahead of us which we overtook. She proved to be the “Cambrian,” Liverpool, seventy days out. We enjoyed the sight of her, an iron vessel, with wire rigging, neat and handsome.

CAPE HORN. [Page 84].

At length we saw Cape Horn Island, the object of our desire, and at 7, P. M., were abreast of it. Some high rocks stood about like sentinels. We were within a mile of the Cape.

Cape Horn Island is the southernmost extremity of Tierra del Fuego, in south latitude 55° 58´. It is the southern termination of a group of rocky islands surmounted with a dome-like hill, out of which is a projection like a straight horn. But Schouten, the Dutch discoverer, is said to have named Cape Horn from Hoorn, in the Netherlands, his native place. The whole hill is a bare rock; indeed, how could anything, even the lowest forms of vegetable life, find root on a place smitten as this is by the waves? Only the lichens, stealing with seeming compassion over every form in nature doomed to barrenness, succeed in holding on to these rocks. The hill is about eight hundred feet high, its base environed by low, black rocks, with not a sign even of marine vegetation. One line of these rocks looks like a fort, the seeming gateway, higher than the rest of the wall, being composed of perpendicular fragments. All along the base of the rough hill, low, irregular piles, like a growth of thorns and brambles around a bowlder in a field, constitute a fringe, as though Nature felt that the place needed some appropriate decoration; and what could be more so than that which she has here given? For a long space toward the termination of the Cape, sharp rocks stand up in groups, and some apart, making a gradual ending of the scene, all in agreement with the wildness which marks the region.

The sight of this spot, one landmark of our continent, can never fade from the memory of the beholder. Like many a distinguished object it is of moderate size, its impressiveness being due not to its bulk or height, but to its position. At first you are disappointed in not seeing at such a place something colossal; you would have it mountainous; at least, you would have thought that it would be columnar. Nothing of this; you have the disappointment which you feel on seeing for the first time a distinguished man, whom you find to be of low stature, whereas you would have had him of imposing appearance. But soon, however, you feel that you are at one of the ends of the earth. Here the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans begin, the great deep dividing itself into those two principal features of our globe. Anything monumental, any thing statuesque, or even picturesque, here, you feel would be trifling. Like silence, more expressive at times than speech, the total absence of all display here is sublimity itself; you would not have it otherwise than an infinite solitude, unpretentious, without form, almost chaotic. Around this point it is as though there were a contest to which ocean each billow shall divide; here the winds and waters make incessant war; the sea always roars and the fulness thereof. The rocks which finally terminate the Cape stand apart, as you sometimes see corners of blocks of buildings where an extensive fire has raged and the most of the walls have fallen in; but here and there a shoulder of a wall overhangs the ruins.

We stood together as we passed the last landmarks, and sang,

“Praise God, from whom all blessings flow.”

It had been a day from beginning to end of constant pleasure, from the moment that we entered the Straits of Le Maire. We had accomplished one great design in our voyage. Would that the pleasant theory that musical sounds leave their vibration in the air might have reality given to it, and praise to God break forth from all of every language who navigate the Cape!

We had reason to feel that we were not a great way from circumpolar regions; for at a quarter before eleven, the night previous, there were lingering streaks of pink light in the west. We never before read out of doors so late in the evening as we did that 21st of December on deck.

We had been steering south, going five degrees below the Cape; then we needed to turn and go northward; but the fierce winds made no account of our plan. You may be several weeks trying in vain, as a ship belonging to our firm was, to double the Cape; but by favoring winds, we were only six days. Once only during this time had we a full view of the Horn; our captain had been here six times, and now for the second time only saw the Cape. Nothing lay between us and the Antarctic Circle and the South Pole. The waves were Cape-Horn swells, peculiar to that region. The sight of the ocean there was wild beyond description. Now and then the sun would come out, but his smile seemed sarcastic. Going on deck to view the tempest you are made to feel, as the ship goes down into deep places, that you would be more surprised at her coming up than if she should disappear. It is a good time and place for faith. One of the Latin fathers said, “Qui discat orare, discat navigare;” Let him who would learn to pray go to sea. It is to be doubted whether there are many places on the globe where one feels the power of solitude precisely as here. In the depth of a wilderness, or among mountains, solitude is more like death; but here it seems to have consciousness; you are spell-bound by some awful power; there is an infinitude about these watery realms; it seems like being in eternity. In the ascent of Mont Blanc, while gazing from the Mer de Glace on those needles of granite, inaccessible except to the eagle, I once felt that nothing could exceed the sense of desolateness there inspired; but to be at the end of a continent, with two oceans separating and forming a wild race-way where they go asunder, all the winds and storms being summoned to witness the inauguration of two oceans, their frantic uproar seemingly designed for the great occasion, Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego with their stupendous solitudes listening to the clamor; and then the feeling that the next place recorded on the map is the Antarctic Circle, with its barriers of cold and ice, you are warranted in the conviction that you are as near the confines of unearthly dimensions as you can be on this planet. You think of home, and the thought of your separation from friends and country and your consignment to these awful wilds, gives you a feeling of littleness, of nothingness, seldom if ever experienced elsewhere. And here is the proud ship that stretched her length in the pier at New York so far as to hold her spar over the passing drays, reaching almost to the opposite ware-rooms, now less than an egg-shell in these waters,—a tiny nautilus, a bubble, whose destruction any moment, unseen by any human eye, could not detain any of these proud waters to be so much as a mound over her grave.

One day, before we entered the Straits and reached Cape Horn, along the neighborhood of Patagonia, the sea was more than usually disturbed, a ground-swell succeeding a gale lifting the waves higher than we had seen them, so that the motion of the ship had no uniformity for any two consecutive moments during the larger part of the day,—a cold, cheerless day, the sun now and then shining faintly, the wind ahead, no chance for a nautical observation, everything to the last degree forlorn. A bird came in all this turmoil and lighted in the water near the ship, and swam about us. The sight suggested the following lines:—

THE CAPE-HORN ALBATROSS.

The ship lay tossing on the stormy ocean,

A head wind challenging her right of way;

Sail after sail she furled; in exultation

The waves accounted her their yielding prey.

On her lee beam the Patagonia coast line

Keeps ambushed reefs to snare the drifting keel;

We fancied breakers in the dying sunshine,

And questioned what the daybreak would reveal.

No cities, towns, nor quiet rural village

Gladden the heart along this lonely way;

But cannibals may lurk with death and pillage

For all whom winds and currents force astray.

The Falkland Isles, Tierra del Fuego,

Straits of Le Maire, the near Antarctic Zone,

The stormy Horn, whose rocks the tempest echo,

Can faith and courage there maintain their throne?

Watching the swell from out the cabin windows,

The towering waves piled high and steep appear;

But what is riding on those mighty billows?

An albatross. The sight allays my fear.

Her snow-white breast she settles on the water,

Her dark wings fluttering while she trims her form,

Then calmly rides; nor can the great waves daunt her,

Nor will she heed the menace of the storm.

She spreads her wings, flies low across the vessel,

She scans the wake, then sails around the bows,

Not moving either pinion; much I marvel

How like one flying in a dream she goes.

She craves the presence of no other sea-bird;

She revels in the power to go at will;

The ocean solitudes, the wandering seaward,

The distant sail, her daring spirit thrill.

Behold, this fowl hath neither barn nor storehouse;

An unseen Hand assists her search for food;

Storms bring her up deep things of ocean’s produce,

Prized the more highly in the storm pursued.

With joy each day I’ll take the wings of morning,

Dwell in the utmost parts of this lone sea;

E’en there thy hand shall lead me, still adoring,

And thy right hand shall hold who trust in Thee.

ROUND THE HORN.

It became stormy in the afternoon of December 21st, with rain. We were driven off our course. The sea came over the sides of the main deck. The motion of the ship was that of a rocking horse. She was so full of a cantering spirit that I knew it would be useless to expect sleep in my berth, so I lay upon a cabin sofa and had rest. The waves were Cape Horn swells. We are directly at the foot of the American continent inclining upwards toward the North. Should we do as well the rest of the way as the preceding, we shall be a hundred and twelve days only from New York to San Francisco. We were all on deck this afternoon enjoying the Cape Horn scenery. The captain and I talked of an event in our family history when he was eight years old, which made this day memorable. We did not then dream of going round Cape Horn twenty-one years from that day. “O how great is thy goodness which thou hast laid up for them that fear thee, which thou hast wrought for them which trust in thee before the sons of men.”

DANGERS IN THE CABIN.

Dec. 24. The gale to-day exceeded anything which we have had. The sight of the ocean was wild beyond description. I went on deck and held on, to see the tempest. The ship went down into deep places, more profound, seemingly, than ever before. But she is a noble sea boat. We have understood how men become enthusiastically attached to the vessel which they are ready to think has consciously borne them around the globe.

You soon are so much used to the wild behavior of the sea that you lose all apprehension of danger. Some experiences in the cabin, in bad weather, make you feel that you are more safe on deck where you seem to have more ‘sea room.’ It is hard to walk in the cabin; the walls are so near you that your eye is more affected with the motion than on deck. You must watch for a windward roll, which does not let you down so low or so violently as a lee roll; then you run to your seat or to a side of the cabin, where you grasp something till the lee lurch has spent itself, when you make for the next point, like runners in playing ball. The difficulty of lifting your feet is marvellous. You are as really cumbered as though you had weights on your feet, or wore heavy clothing. It is amusing to see even the captain pause in the middle of the cabin, unable to move, his feet judiciously wide apart, waiting for the back roll to restore the level. He retorts by expressing the wish that the congregation at home could see their pastor in his efforts to get across the cabin.

But it is not all fun. I was sitting about six feet from the stove in the dining-room, in the forward cabin, in the low easy-chair which we brought from home. The back legs were inside a closet, the threshold of which it was hoped would serve for a stay against sliding; when the ship gave a lurch, and I went head first into the low wooden box, in which the stove, a very heavy one, stood, my weight pushing the stove out of place, and bringing me down on my knees and wrists, the chair following me on my back. The steward ran and helped me up. After a few moments I was well, but I record this as a merciful preservation. Feeling strong and able-bodied, I have no trouble from such mishaps, but I would not advise a feeble person to go to sea, certainly not round Cape Horn; but if he must go, to be as careful in the cabin as he can see that he must be on deck.

CHRISTMAS AT SEA.

It would have been pleasant to our friends to see stockings on our door handles and to witness the contents. Mine had a colored-letter drawing of the words, “The Lord is my Shepherd;” a long shoe-case made of duck, bound with green; a small muslin bag filled with lumps of white sugar, marked, Cape Horn confectionary. The captain had a green necktie, made in a region where neckties are not often devised, the materials, however, unquestionably from “Chandler’s” or “Hovey’s;” also a pen-wiper; the mates had some articles of needle work, and chains made in part of bloom raisins which came the other day from the brig Hazard. Fresh raisins off Cape Horn are a greater curiosity and luxury than friends at home can suppose. The captain’s presents to the donors of these gifts were, a jar of pickles and a bottle of olives; mine were destined to be for some time useless, there being no shops in this region; but the small pieces of gold expressed a good intention. The afternoon was spent by a party, including the captain and first mate, around the stove in the forward cabin listening to one of Dickens’ Christmas Carols, they having already enjoyed six volumes of his works in beguiling some dreary afternoons; also, in amusing themselves with the exercise of “bean bags,” on deck. When it was dark we were entertained with narratives of expedients which were used in preparing the presents, the emptying of the rag bag and the search among its contents for materials, the difficulty of standing, of going about and even of sitting at work while the ship was playing her antics of position; the devices by the principal actors in hanging up the presents so as to elude detection, pretending unusual wakefulness in sitting up beyond midnight and trying to persuade the captain that he needed sleep; and especially the attempt to keep awake beyond the hour when the mate would come down to the pantry to refresh himself with a bite of salt beef and pie. The amusements of the day ended with putting down the cabin light and standing at the window to see and hear the boatswain perform his Christmas Carol, sitting in his little room, his feet on his bunk level with his head, he singing, “Shall we gather at the river?” his pipe in his hand lifted to his mouth for a few whiffs at the end of each verse, the pipe seemingly performing the part of the customary interlude on the musical instrument at church. So we had our Christmas presents where a year ago we little expected. Last evening we observed our custom of having Milton’s Christmas Hymn read to us, the captain being appointed the reader. It was very dark and stormy at noon, but we had a merry Christmas.

* * * * *

Dec. 26. It rains, and there is the thickest fog which it seems to me I ever saw. I groped my way into the bows, to look, as a transcendentalist would say, “into the invisible.” A sailor was in the bows alone, leaning against the forestay, wrapped in his oil-cloth coat, looking out for any vessel which might be passing. His watch was for two hours, a dreary, uninteresting service. He was a young man, full of zeal to go aloft, among the first to venture out to the weather earring, to leap upon the swinging board over the side or stern in painting. None seem so happy as the boys of the crew; but this duty of watching in a fog, of a cold day, has as little excitement in it as any thing in a sailor’s routine.

A YOUNG SAILOR’S EXPERIENCE.

One who had been several years before the mast and afterwards successively third, second, first mate, lately said to me, “When a young man, standing on the top gallant forecastle, leaning against the forestay, in a foggy day or dark night, the ship rushing into the dark unknown beyond, I sometimes thought, What if there should be an end to the sea, a precipice over which we should plunge, an undiscovered continent against which we should run! How did Columbus feel on his first voyage in a fog or in darkness? What a picture of life, its unknown future! so little the sailor knows what may be ahead of the ship; but the captain, confident in his chart, compass and reckoning, knows the way that he takes.”

I have been much affected by what the young sailor told me of his first months before the mast; how he parted with members of his family circle, the ship just taken in tow by the tug, the last line which held them to the shore cast off, he standing with his arm on the rail, his head on his hand, looking at those he loved best on earth, and thinking what scenes he should pass through in the sixteen months before he should see them, if ever, again; when he was roused from his reverie by the mate’s calling to him, “Boy, what are you standing there for? go forward and tie up those cabbages.” He saw one of his family waving a handkerchief to him; but he was ashamed to be seen answering it; the hour of sentiment had passed; he must go and tie up the cabbages. The first few nights at sea the profane, vile talk of some of the sailors at night used to keep him awake, astonished and terrified. He used to say to himself, “My God! have I come to this? Did I once have a christian home? Why did I leave it? The physician said that I must go to sea, but he could not have known what life in a forecastle is. An old sailor said to me, ‘Boy, do you know that you stepped into hell afloat, when you came here?’ Soon I managed to stop up my ears when I turned in, so as not to hear the dreadful talk.”

I said to him, “How did you help using their language and practising their wicked ways?”

He replied, “So far from corrupting me you will think it strange, perhaps, if I say that it made me more pure. I left off some things which I used to practise without compunction. But the behavior of the men showed me what I should become, if I practised any kind of wickedness. When I heard the men swear and talk ribaldry, I repeated passages of Scripture as fast as I could, said all the hymns I could remember, and I knew a good many. My sister once promised me a half dollar if I would learn the Wesminster Assembly’s Shorter Catechism; I said it to her, and she gave me the money, and I used to say that Catechism over and over in bed; Effectual Calling, Justification by faith, and, What is required, and What is forbidden in each of the commandments, used to be to me in that forecastle like a cloth dipped in some aromatic liquid and pressed to my face.”

I told the young man that if he would write and publish his experience he might find, by the good that he would do, why providence led him into that bitter experience in the forecastle.

“I often think,” said he, “of those words: ‘His way is in the sea,’ for I am sure it has been so with me.”

The recollection of this narrative was forced upon me in looking into the fog as I lay in the knightheads and looked over and watched the cutwater breaking the way for the ship. But it grew cold, and I retreated to the stove.

We had a lively time in the middle of the night. The jib could not stand the gale, part of it was blown to tatters, much of it was blown away. It is a three-cornered sail, sixty feet in its extreme length. The men said that the noise of the wind among the loose sails was as though the forward part of the ship was breaking up. The watch below had turned in half an hour before, but now all hands were ordered on deck. Twenty-four men were on the main yard taking in the sail. It makes a landsman dizzy to see them standing aloft on a foot rope, the wind filling the sail and keeping it stiffly bent from them; yet they must clutch it, bring it in against the wind, holding on by the little slack which they must contrive to gather, their feet meanwhile with nothing under them but a rope. I could liken the noise of the wind and the roar of the sea only to the noise made by an express train when you are standing on a platform at a railway station. The sound sleep into which I fell was not disturbed by this uproar, but it yielded to so slight a cause as the dropping of water upon my bed. The hot weather of previous weeks had made the chinks open, and now the rain had found its way through the deck. There was no more sleep in the premises for that night. An alarm of fire is hardly less effectual in its power to wake you than the slow, measured, dripping water. The captain brought his india rubber coat, spread it over the bed, and made a place for a pool, which in the morning was filled, the tenant having been obliged to beat a retreat for the remainder of the night to a cabin sofa.

Dec. 26. We are almost round the Cape. From Lat. 50° South in the Atlantic to 50° South in the Pacific is called “round the Cape.” We are getting into the longitude of Boston, 71° W., so that time with us will be the same as with those at home, for a while.

THE SHIP’S TRACK.

Dec. 27. We came within twenty-five miles of Tierra del Fuego again, on its western side, the wind setting us that way, so that we had to tack and run W. instead of S. E. The captain, after he has taken an observation, draws a line on his chart with his pen, showing the distance run and the direction for the last twenty-four hours. It is described for the last three days thus, (the line representing the number of degrees, according to an arbitrary measurement, and each day indicated by a cipher:)

Sometimes the course is deflected by contrary winds; for example, thus:

which is a loss. We have a chart with the tracks of several vessels printed on it. One vessel was sixty days in getting round the Cape; the winds let us pass in twelve. The vessel referred to made several squares in her course, with other geometrical figures, sailing a part of the time thus:

You hereby see one cause of long passages. One day we made only eight miles out of one hundred and twenty sailed; a few days before we went two hundred and forty miles. One day while going round the Cape we gained so little that we should be, at that rate, one thousand days in getting to San Francisco.

MAKING LAND ROUND THE HORN.

Dec. 29. Saturday afternoon the captain said, “We shall see land before dark.” At sunset our hope was fulfilled. We saw, fifteen miles off, a high hill in New Chili, formerly a part of Patagonia. We tacked and ran S. W. instead of N. W. To-day the head wind beat us within twelve miles of land, and again we had to tack. We must do it once more this evening. The captain evidently has a great strain on his mind, though he says but little. He keeps on deck a large part of the time of late, leaving little or nothing to the mates.

THE LAST DAY OF THE YEAR.

A year ago to-day I should have anticipated being anywhere as here. Never have I had so much cause for wonder and joy at the close of a year. Blessed sickness! which prepared the way into the wilderness of waters. It would not be easy to trace the connection of the following lines which occurred to me about this time, with the meditations suggested by the close of the year; but I had been thinking of our Omnipresent Saviour as once living in a house; a humble dwelling, no doubt, in “a city called Nazareth.” It was good to think of Him who has now gone up on high that he might fill all things, as once tabernacled with men. The train of thought will serve for an illustration of the liberty which the mind will sometimes take of being independent of situation and circumstances:

“And the two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus. Then Jesus turned and saw them following, and saith unto them, What seek ye? They said unto him, Rabbi, (which is to say, being interpreted, Master,) where dwellest thou? He saith unto them, Come and see. They came and saw where he dwelt and abode with him that day; for it was about the tenth hour.” John I. 37, 39.

This roof once covered him who built the sky;

A room inclosed him who now fills all space

With thousand thousands rendering ministry;

He led the way to this His dwelling place,

And two disciples shared his courtesies,

Had friendly talk and brake their privacies,

Nor once withdrew from him their wondering eyes.

Sleep soothed him here whose eyes are flames of fire;

Here waked he at the crowing of the cock;

Hunger and thirst his daily thoughts require

Who now feeds worlds, as one would feed a flock.

Here would he kneel in prayer; dominions own

Him sovereign, bide his orders; round his throne

Prayers ceaseless rise, urged in his name alone.

Not far from this abode the wild gazelle

Cropped the red lilies and would venture near.

The devils knew him, cried, foreboding ill,

Fell down before him with tormenting fear.

Diseases fled; he stayed the expiring breath,

Bade the blind see; he brake the bars of death,

His home, the while, despised Nazareth.

By night upon this housetop oft he sat;

He watched the young moon as the light of day

Grew dim from east to west; he tarrying yet

Her crescent sank; on snow crowned Hermon lay

The lingering twilight, with a roseate hue

Tinging the snow, the small hills lost to view.

He formed that light; he framed the darkness too.

Let me believe that on this humble floor

His mother sought a piece of money lost,

And swept the house; his young eyes counting o’er