 | The South-west |  |
1. THE SOUTH WEST.
1. I.
A state of bliss—Cabin passenger—Honey-hunting—Sea-life—
Its effects—Green horns—Reading—Tempicide—Monotony—
Wish for excitement—Superlative misery—Log—Combustible
materials—Cook and bucket—Contrary winds—All ready, good
Sirs—Impatient passengers—Signal for sailing—Under weigh.
To be a “Cabin passenger” fifteen or twenty
days out, in a Yankee merchantman, is to be in a
state as nearly resembling that of a half-assoilzied
soul in purgatory, as flesh and blood can well be
placed in. A meridian sun—a cloudless sky—a
sea of glass, like a vast burning reflector, giving
back a twin-heaven inverted—a dry, hot air, as
though exhaled from a Babylonian furnace, and a
deck, with each plank heated to the foot like a
plate of hot steel—with the “Horse latitudes,” for
the scene, might, perhaps, heighten the resemblance.
Zimmerman, in his excellent excellent upon solitude,
has described man, in a “state of solitary indolence
and inactivity, as sinking by degrees, like
stagnant water, into impurity and corruption.”
Had he intended to describe from experience, the
novelty of his new situation upon the heaving
bosom of the “dark blue sea,” had given place to
the tiresome monotony of never-varying, daily
repeated scenes, he could not have illustrated it
by a more striking figure. This is a state of which
you are happily ignorant. Herein, ignorance is
the height of bliss, although, should a Yankee
propensity for peregrinating stimulate you to
become wiser by experience, I will not say that
your folly will be more apparent than your wisdom.
But if you continue to vegetate in the
lovely valley of your nativity, one of “New-England's
yeomanry,” as you are wont, not a little
proudly, to term yourself—burying for that distinctive
honour your collegiate laurels beneath the broad-brim
of the farmer—exchanging your “gown” for
his frock—“Esq.” for plain “squire,” and the
Mantuan's Georgics for those of the Maine Farmer's
Almanac—I will cheerfully travel for you; though,
as I shall have the benefit of the wear and tear,
rubs and bruises—it will be like honey-hunting in
our school-boy days, when one fought the bees
while the other secured the sweet plunder.
This sea life, to one who is not a sailor, is a sad
enough existence—if it may be termed such. The
tombstone inscription “Hic jacet,” becomes prematurely
his own, with the consolatory adjunct et
non resurgam. A condition intermediate between
life and death, but more assimilated to the latter
than the former, it is passed, almost invariably, in
that proverbial inactivity, mental and corporeal,
of a long passage. It is a state in which
existence is burthensome and almost insupportable,
destroying that healthy tone of mind and body, so
necessary to the preservation of the economy of
the frame of man.—Nothing will so injure a good
disposition, as a long voyage. Seeds of impatience
and of indolence are there sown, which will be for
a long period painfully manifest. The sweetest
tempered woman I ever knew, after a passage of
sixty days, was converted into a querulous Xantippe;
and a gentleman of the most active habits,
after a voyage of much longer duration, acquired
such indolent ones, that his usefulness as a man of
business was for a long time destroyed; and it was
only by the strongest application of high, moral
energy, emanating from a mind of no common order,
that he was at length enabled wholly to be himself
again. There is but one antidote for this disease,
which should be nosologically classed as Melancholia
Oceana, and that is employment. But on
shipboard, this remedy, like many other good ones
on shore, cannot always be found. A meddling,
bustling passenger, whose sphere on land has been
one of action, and who pants to move in his little
circumscribed orbit at sea, is always a “lubberly
green horn,” or “clumsy marine,” in every tar's way
—in whose eye the “passenger” is only fit to thin
hen-coops, bask in the sun, talk to the helmsman, or,
now and then, desperately venture up through the
“lubber's hole” to look for land a hundred leagues in
mid ocean, or, cry “sail ho!” as the snowy mane
cloud upon the horizon, flashes for an instant
upon his unpractised vision.
A well-selected library, which is a great luxury
at sea, and like most luxuries very rare, does
wonders toward lessening this evil; but it is still
far from constituting a panacea. I know not how
it is, unless the patient begins in reality to suspect
that he is taking reading as a prescription against
the foe, and converting his volumes into pill boxes
—which by and by gets to be too painfully the
truth—but the appetite soon becomes sated, the
mind wearied, and the most fascinating and
favourite authors “pall upon the sense” with a
tiresome familiarity. Reading becomes hateful,
for the very reason that it has become necessary.
Amusements are exhausted, invented, changed,
varied, and again exhausted. Every thing upon
which the attention fixes itself, vainly wooing
something novel, soon becomes insipid. Chess,
back-gammon, letter-writing, journalizing, smoking,
eating, drinking, and sleeping, may at first contribute
not a little to the discomfiture of old Time, who
walks the sea shod with leaden sandals. The
last three enumerated items, however, generally
hold out to the last undisabled. But three Wellingtons
could not have won Waterloo unsupported;
nor, able and doughty as are these bold three—
much as they prolong the combat—manfully as
they fight, can they hold good their ground for
ever; the obstinate, scythe-armed warrior, with his
twenty-four body guards following him like his
of his diurnal territory, over which, manœuvre as
they may, these discomfited worthies cannot extend
their front.
Few situations are less enviable, than that of
the worn voyager, as day after day “drags its slow
length along,” presenting to his restless, listless
eyes, as he stretches them wearily over the leaden
waste around him—the same unbroken horizon,
forming the periphery of a circle, of which his
vessel seems to be the immovable and everlasting
centre—the same blue, unmeaning skies above—
the same blue sea beneath and around—the same
gigantic tracery of ropes and spars, whose fortuitous
combinations of strange geometrical figures he has
demonstrated, till they are as familiar as the
diagrams on a turtle's back to an alderman; and the
same dull white sails, with whose patches he has
become as familiar as with the excrescences and
other innocent defects upon the visages of his
fellow-sufferers.
On leaving port, I commenced a journal, or
rather, as I am in a nautical atmosphere, a “log,”
the choicest chips of which shall be hewn off,
basketed in fools-cap, and duly transmitted to you.
Like other chips they may be useful to kindle the
fire withal. “What may not warm the feelings
may—the toes,” is a truism of which you need not
be reminded: and if you test it practically, it will
not be the first time good has been elicited from
evil. But the sameness of a sea-life will by no
means afford me many combustible incidents.
if the deed cannot be.” Now I have the will to
pile a hecatomb, but if I can pile only a couple of
straws, it will be, of course, the same thing in the
abstract. Mine, perchance, may be the fate of that
poor journalist who, in a voyage across the Atlantic,
could obtain but one wretched item wherewith
to fill his journal—which he should have published,
by the way. What a rare sort of a book it would
have been! So soon read too! In this age when
type-blotted books are generative, it would immortalize
the author. Tenderly handed down from one
generation to another, it would survive the “fall of
empires, and the crash of worlds.” “At three
and a quarter P. M., ship going two and a half knots
per hour, the cook lost his bucket over-board—
jolly boat lowered, and Jack and Peter rowed
after it.”
“Half-past three, P. M.—Cook has got his bucket
again—and a broken head into the bargain.”
To one who has never “played with Ocean's
mane,” nor, borne by his white-winged coursers,
scoured his pathless fields, there may be, even in
the common-place descriptions of sea-scenes, something,
which wears the charm of novelty. If my
hasty sketches can contribute to your entertainment
“o' winter nights,” or, to the gratification of your
curiosity, they will possess an influence which I
do not promise or predict for them.
Unfavourable winds had detained our ship several
days, and all who had taken passage were on the
“tiptoe of expectation” for the signal for sailing.
the paraphernalia of travelling equipage, had long
been packed, locked, and shipped—and our eyes
had hourly watched the fickle gyrations of a horizontal
gilt figure, which surmounted the spire of a
neighbouring church, till they ached again. Had
the image been Eolus himself, it could not have
commanded more devoted worshippers.
A week elapsed—and patience, which hitherto
had been admirably sustained, began to flag; murmurings
proceeded from the lips of more than one
of the impatient passengers, as by twos and threes,
they would meet by a kind of sympathetic affinity
at the corners of the streets, where an unobstructed
view could be obtained of some church-vane, all
of which, throughout our city of churches, had
taken a most unaccommodating fancy to kick their
golden-shod heels at the Northern Bear.
At precisely twenty minutes before three of the
clock, on the afternoon of the first of November instant,
the phlegmatic personage in the gilt robe,
very obligingly, after he had worn our patience to
shreds by his obstinacy, let his head and heels exchange
places. At the same moment, ere he had
ceased vibrating and settled himself steadily in his
new position, the welcome signal was made, and
in less than half an hour afterward, we were all,
with bag and baggage, on board the ship, which
rode at her anchor two hundred fathoms from the
shore.
The top-sails, already loosed, were bellying and
wildly collapsing with a loud noise, in the wind;
superior officer, the active seamen soon extended
them upon the spars—immense fields of swelling
canvass; and our vessel gracefully moved from her
moorings, and glided through the water with the
lightness of a swan.
As we moved rapidly down the noble harbour,
which, half a century since, bore upon its bosom
the hostile fleet of the proud island of the north,
the swelling ocean was sending in its evening tribute
to the continent, in vast scrolls, which rolled
silently, but irresistibly onward, and majestically
unfolded upon the beach—or, with a hoarse roar,
resounded along the cliffs, and surged among the
rocky throats of the promontory, impressing the
mind with emotions of sublimity and awe.
2. II.
A tar's headway on land—A gentleman's at sea—An agreeable
trio—Musical sounds—Helmsman—Supper—Steward—A truism—Helmsman's
cry—Effect—Cases for bipeds—Lullaby—Sleep.
The motion was just sufficiently lively to inspirit
one—making the blood frolic through the
veins, and the heart beat more proudly. The old
tars, as they cruised about the decks, walked as
steadily as on land. This proves nothing, you may
and left oblique” advance on a
shore cruise.
Our tyros of the sea, in their venturesome projections
of their persons from one given point in their
eye to another, in the hope of accomplishing a
straight line, after vacillating most appallingly, would
finally succeed “haud passibus æquis” in reaching
the position aimed for, fortunate if a lee-lurch
did not accommodate them with a dry bed in the
“lee scuppers.”
Of all laughter-exciting locomotives which most
create sensations of the ludicrously serious, commend
me to an old land-crab teaching its young
one to “go ahead”—a drunkard, reeling homeward
through a broad street on a Saturday night—and a
“gentleman passenger” three days at sea in his
strange evolutions over the deck.
Stretched before me upon the weather hen-coop,
enveloped in his cloak, lay one of our “goodlie
companie.” If his sensations were such as I imagined
them to be, he must have felt that the simplest
chicken under him wore the stoutest heart.
On the lee hen-coop reposed another passenger
in sympathy with his fellow, to whose feelings I
felt a disposition to do equal justice. Abaft the
wheel, coiled up in the rigging, an agreeable substitute
for a bed of down, lay half obscured within
the shadow of the lofty stern, another overdone toper
—a victim of Neptune, not of the “jolly god”—but
whose sensations have been experienced by many
salt water than their own tears.
It has been said or sung by some one, that the
“ear is the road to the heart.” That it was so to
the stomach, I already began to feel, could not be
disputed; and as certain “guttural sounds” began
to multiply from various quarters, with startling
emphasis, lest I should be induced to sympathize
with the fallen novitiates around me, by some overt
act, I hastily glided by the helmsman, who stood
alone like the sole survivor of a battle-field—his
weather-beaten visage illuminated at the moment
with a strange glare from the “binnacle-lamp” which,
concealed within a case like a single-windowed
pigeon house, and open in front of him, burned
nightly at his feet. The next moment I was in the
cabin, now lighted up by a single lamp suspended
from the centre of the ceiling, casting rather shade
than light upon a small table—studiously arranged for
supper by the steward—that non-descript locum tenens
for valet—waiter—chambermaid—shoe-black
—cook's-mate, and swearing-post for irascible captains
to vent stray oaths upon, when the wind is
ahead—with a flying commission for here, there,
and nowhere! when most wanted.
But the supper! ay, the supper. Those for
whom the inviting display was made, were, I am
sorry to say it, most unhesitatingly “floored” and
quite hors du combat. What a deal of melancholy
truth there is in that aphorism, which teaches us
that the “brave must yield to the braver!”
As I stood beside the helmsman, I could feel the
gallant vessel springing away from under me, quivering
through every oaken nerve, like a high-mettled
racer with his goal but a bound before him. As
she encountered some more formidable wave, there
would be a tremendous outlay of animal-like
energy, a momentary struggle, a half recoil, a
plunging, trembling—onward rush—then a triumphant
riding over the conquered foe, scattering the
gems from its shivered crest in glittering showers
over her bows. Then gliding with velocity over
the glassy concave beyond, swaying to its up-lifting
impulse with a graceful inclination of her lofty
masts, and almost sweeping the sea with her yards,
she would majestically recover herself in time to
gather power for a fresh victory.
Within an hour after clearing the last head-land,
whose lights, level with the plain of the sea,
gleamed afar off, twinkling and lessened like stars,
with which they were almost undistinguishably
mingled on the horizon—we had exchanged the
abrupt, irregular “seas” of the bay, for the regular,
majestically rolling billows of the ocean.
I had been for some time pacing the deck, with
the “officer of the watch” to recover my sea-legs,
when the helmsman suddenly shouted in a wild
startling cry, heard, mingling with the wind high
above the booming of the sea, the passing hour of
the night watch.—“Four bells.”—“Four bells,” repeated
the only one awake on the forecastle, and
the next moment the ship's bell rung out loud and
clear—wildly swelling upon the gale, then mournfully
like the far-off strains of unearthly music—
As a trumpet music dies,
By the night wind borne away
Through the wild and stormy skies.”
a man mingling with the deep tones of a bell,
heard at night upon the sea, that familiar as my
ear was with the sounds—the blood chilled at my
heart as this “lonely watchman's cry” broke suddenly
upon the night.
When he again told the hour I was safely stowed
away in a comfortable berth, not so large as that
of Goliah of Gath by some cubits, yet admirably
adapted to the sea, which serves most discourteously
the children of Somnus, unless they fit their
berths like a modern M. D. his sulkey, lulled to
sleep by the rattling of cordage, the measured
tread of the watch directly over me, the moanings,
et cetera, of sleepless neighbours, the roaring of
the sea, the howling of the wind, and the gurgling
and surging of the water, as the ship rushed through
it, shaking the waves from her sides, as the lion
scatters the dew from his mane, and the musical
rippling of the eddies—like a glassichord, rapidly run
over by light fingers—curling and singing under the
keel.
3. III.
Shakspeare—Suicide or a `fowl' deed—A conscientious table
—Fishing smacks—A pretty boy—Old Skipper, Skipper junior, and
little Skipper—A young Caliban—An alliterate Man—Fishermen
—Nurseries—Navy—The Way to train up a Child—Gulf Stream
—Humboldt—Crossing the Gulf—Ice-ships—Yellow fields—Flying
fish—A game at bowls—Bermuda—A post of observation—
Men, dwellings, and women of Bermuda—St. George—English
society—Washing decks—Mornings at sea—Evenings at sea—A
Moonlight scene—The ocean on fire—Its phosphorescence—
Hypotheses.
“Let's whip these stragglers o'er the seas again,”
was the gentle oratory of the aspiring Richard, in
allusion to the invading Bretagnes.—
“Lash hence these overweening rags of France.”
The interpreter of the heart's natural language—
Shakspeare, above all men, was endowed with
human inspiration. His words come ripe to our
lips like the fruit of our own thoughts. We speak
them naturally and unconsciously. They drop from
us like the unpremeditated language of children—
spring forth unbidden—the richest melody of the
mind. Strong passion, whether of grief or joy,
while seeking in the wild excitement of the moment
her own words for utterance, unconsciously
enunciates his, with a natural and irresistible energy.
There is scarcely a human thought, great or simple,
as never man, uninspired, spake; which he
has not embodied and clothed with a drapery of
language, unsurpassable. So—
“Let's whip this straggler o'er the seas again,”
from your lips, as most applicable to
my barren letter; in penning which I shall be
driven to extremity for any thing of an interesting
character. If it must be so, I am, of all epistlers,
the most innocent.
Ship, air, and ocean equally refuse to furnish me
with a solitary incident. My wretched “log” now
and then records an event: such as for instance,
how one of “the Doctor's” plumpest and most deliciously
embonpoint pullets, very rashly and unadvisedly
perpetrated a summerset over-board, after
she had been decapitated by that sable gentleman,
in certainly the most approved and scientific style.
None but a very silly chicken could have been
dissatisfied with the unexceptionable manner in
which the operation was performed. But, both
feathered and plucked bipeds, it seems, it is equally
hard to please.
For the last fourteen days we have been foot-balls
for the winds and waves. Their game may
last as many more; therefore, as we have as little
free agency in our movements as foot-balls themselves,
we have made up our minds to yield our
fretted bodies as philosophically as may be, to their
farther pastime. The sick have recovered, and
warm south sun, like so many luxurious crocodiles.
To their good appetites let our table bear witness.
Should it be blessed with a conscience, it is doubly
blessed by having it cleared thrice daily by the most
rapacious father-confessors that ever shrived penitent;
of which “gentlemen of the cloth” it boasts no
less than eight.
The first day we passed through a widely dispersed
fleet of those short, stump-masted non-descripts,
with swallow-tailed sterns, snubbed bows,
and black hulls, sometimes denominated fishing
smacks, but oftener and more euphoniously, “Chebacco
boats,” which, from May to October, are scattered
over our northern seas.
While we dashed by them, one after another, in
our lofty vessel, as, close-hauled on the wind, or
“wing and wing,” they flew over the foaming sea, I
could not help smiling at the ludicrous scenes which
some of their decks exhibited.
One of them ran so close to us, that we could
have tossed a potato into the “skipper's” dinner-pot,
which was boiling on a rude hearth of bricks placed
upon the open deck, under the surveillance of, I
think, the veriest mop-headed, snub-nosed bit of an
urchin that I ever saw.
“Keep away a little, or you'll run that fellow
down,” suddenly shouted the captain to the helmsman;
and the next moment the little fishing vessel
shot swiftly under our stern, just barely clearing the
spanker boom, whirling and bouncing about in the
in the surf of Madras.
There were on board of her four persons, including
the steersman—a tall, gaunt old man, whose
uncovered gray locks streamed in the wind as he
stooped to his little rudder to luff up across our wake.
The lower extremities of a loose pair of tar-coated
duck trowsers, which he wore, were incased, including
the best part of his legs, in a pair of fisherman's
boots, made of leather which would flatten a
rifle ball. His red flannel shirt left his hairy breast
exposed to the icy winds, and a huge pea-jacket,
thrown, Spanish fashion, over his shoulders, was
fastened at the throat by a single button. His tarpaulin—a
little narrow-brimmed hat of the pot-lid
tribe, secured by a ropeyarn—had probably been
thrown off in the moment of danger, and now hung
swinging by a lanyard from the lower button-hole
of his jacket.
As his little vessel struggled like a drowning man
in the yawning concave made by the ship, he stood
with one hand firmly grasping his low, crooked rudder,
and with the other held the main sheet, which
alone he tended. A short pipe protruded from his
mouth, at which he puffed away incessantly; one
eye was tightly closed, and the other was so contracted
within a network of wrinkles, that I could just
discern the twinkle of a gray pupil, as he cocked it
up at our quarter-deck, and took in with it the noble
size, bearing, and apparel of our fine ship.
A duplicate of the old helmsman, though less battered
locks a red, woollen, conical cap, was “easing off” the
foresheet as the little boat passed; and a third was
stretching his neck up the companion ladder, to
stare at the “big ship,” while the little carroty-headed
imp, who was just the old skipper razeed,
was performing the culinary operations of his little
kitchen under cover of the heavens.
Our long pale faces tickled the young fellow's
fancy extremely.
“Dad,” squalled the youthful reprobate, in the
softest, hinge-squeaking soprano—“Dad, I guess
as how them ar' chaps up thar, ha'nt lived on salt
grub long.”—The rascal—we could have minced
him with his own fish and potatoes.
“Hold your yaup, you youngster you,” roared
the old man in reply.—The rest of the beautiful
alliteration was lost in the distance, as his smack
bounded from us, carrying the young sans-culotte
out of reach of the consequences of his temerity.
To mention salt grub to men of our stomachs' capacity,
at that moment! He merited impaling upon
one of his own cod-hooks. In ten minutes after, we
could just discern the glimmer of the little vessel's
white sails on the verge of the distant horizon, in
whose hazy hue the whole fleet soon disappeared.
These vessels were on a tardy return from their
Newfoundland harvests, which, amid fogs and
squalls, are gathered with great toil and privation
between the months of May and October. The
fishermen constitute a distinct and peculiar class—
not of society, but of men. To you I need not describe
in great numbers, about the wharves of New-England
sea-ports in the winter season—weather-browned,
long-haired, coarsely garbed men, with honesty
and good nature stamped upon their furrowed and
strongly marked features. They are neither “seamen”
nor “countrymen,” in the usual signification
of these words, but a compound of both; combining
the careless, free-and-easy air of the one, with the
awkwardness and simplicity of the other. Free
from the grosser vices which characterize the foreign-voyaged
sailor, they seldom possess, however, that
religious tone of feeling which distinguishes the
ruder countryman.
Marblehead and Cape Cod are the parent nurseries
of these hardy men. Portland has, however,
begun to foster them, thereby adding a new and vigorous
sinew to her commercial strength. In conjunction
with the whale fisheries, to which the cod
are a sort of introductory school, these fisheries are
the principal nurseries of American seamen. I have
met with many American ships' crews, one-half or
two-thirds of which were composed of men who had
served their apprenticeship in the “fisheries.” The
youth and men whom they send forth are the bone
and muscle of our navy. They have an instinctive
love for salt water. Every one who is a parent,
takes his sons, one after another, as they doff their
petticoats, if the freedom of their limbs was ever restrained
by such unnecessary appendages, and places
them on the deck of his fishing smack; teaches
them to call the ropes by their names, bait, fling,
harpoon, or plunge the grains—just as the Indian
is accustomed to lead his warrior-boys forth to the
hunting grounds, and teach them to track the light-footed
game, or heavier-heeled foe—wing, with unerring
aim, the fatal arrow, or launch the deadly
spear.
The three succeeding days we were delayed by
calms, or contending with gales and head winds.
On the morning of the seventh day “out,” there was
a general exclamation of surprise from the passengers
as they came on deck.
“How warm!” “What a suffocating air!” “We
must have sailed well last night to be so far south!”
They might well have been surprised if this change
in the temperature had been gained by regular
“southing.” But, alas, we had barely lessened our
latitude twenty miles during the night. We had
entered the Gulf Stream! that extraordinary natural
phenomenon of the Atlantic Ocean. This immense
circle of tepid water which revolves in the
Atlantic, enclosing within its periphery, the West
India and Western Islands, is supposed by Humboldt
to be occasioned “by the current of rotation
(trade winds) which strikes against the coasts of
Veraguas and Honduras, and ascending toward the
Gulf of Mexico, between Cape Caloche and Cape
St. Antoine, issues between the Bahamas and Florida.”
From this point of projection, where it is
but a few miles wide, it spreads away to the northeast
in the shape of an elongated slightly curved
fan, passing at the distance of about eighty miles
opposite Havana, of about four miles an hour,
which decreases in proportion to its distance from
this point. Opposite Nantucket, where it takes a
broad, sweeping curve toward Newfoundland, it
moves generally only about two miles an hour.
Bending from Newfoundland through the Western
Islands, it loses much of its velocity at this distance
from its radiating point, and in the eastern Atlantic
its motion is scarcely perceptible, except by a slight
ripple upon the surface.
This body of water is easily distinguishable from
that of the surrounding blue ocean by its leaden hue
—the vast quantity of pale-yellow gulf-weed, immense
fields of which it wafts from clime to clime
upon its ever-rolling bosom, and by the absence of
that phosphorescence, which is peculiar to the waters
of the ocean. The water of this singular stream is
many degrees warmer than the sea through which
it flows. Near Cuba the heat has been ascertained
to be as great as 81°, and in its course northward
from Cuba, it loses 2° of temperature for every 3°
of latitude. Its warmth is easily accounted for as
the production of very simple causes. It receives
its original impulse in the warm tropical seas, which,
pressed toward the South American shore by the
wind, meet with resistance and are deflected along
the coast northward, as stated above by Humboldt,
and injected into the Northern Atlantic Ocean—the
vast column of water having parted with very little
of its original caloric in its rapid progress.
We crossed the north-western verge of “The
breadth is about eighty miles. The atmosphere
was sensibly warmer here than that of the ocean
proper, and the water which we drew up in the
ship's bucket raised the mercury a little more than
8°. Not knowing how the mercury stood before
entering the Gulf, I could not determine accurately
the change in the atmosphere; but it must have
been very nearly as great as that in the denser fluid.
Veins of cool air circled through its atmosphere
every few minutes, as welcome and refreshing to
our bared foreheads as the sprinkling of the coolest
water.
When vessels in their winter voyages along our
frigid coasts become coated with ice, so as to resemble
almost precisely, though of a gigantic size,
those miniature glass ships so often seen preserved
in transparent cases, they seek the genial warmth
of this region to “thaw out,” as this dissolving process
is termed by the sailors. We were nearly
three days in crossing the Gulf, at a very acute
angle with its current, which period of time we
passed very pleasantly, for voyagers; as we had no
cold weather to complain of, and a variety of objects
to entertain us. Sea, or Gulf-weed, constantly
passed us in acres, resembling immense meadows
of harvest wheat, waving and undulating with the
breeze, tempting us to walk upon it. But for the
ceaseless roll and pitching of our ship, reminding us
of our where-about, we might, without much trouble,
have been cheated into the conviction that it
was real terra firma.
Flocks of flying fish suddenly breaking from a
smooth, swelling billow, to escape the jaws of some
voracious pursuer, whose dorsal fin would be seen
protruding for an instant afterward from the surface,
flitted swiftly, with a skimming motion, over the sea,
glittering in the sun like a flight of silver-winged
birds; and then as suddenly, with dried wings, dropped
into the sea again. One morning we found the
decks sprinkled with these finned aerial adventurers,
which had flown on board during the night.
Spars, covered with barnacles—an empty barrel
marked on the head N. E. Rum, which we slightly
altered our course to speak—a hotly contested affaire
d'honneur, between two bantam-cocks in the
weather-coop—a few lessons in splicing and braiding
sennet, taken from a good-natured old sailor—a
few more in the art of manufacturing “Turks'Heads,”
not, however, à la Grec—and other matters and
things equally important, also afforded subjects of
speculation and chit-chat, and means of passing
away the time with a tolerable degree of comfort,
and, during the intervals of eating and sleeping, to
keep us from the blues.
A gallant ship—a limitless sea rolled out like a
vast sheet of mottled silver—“goodlie companie”—
a warm, reviving sun—a flowing sheet, and a
courteous breeze, so gently breathing upon our
sails, that surly Boreas, in a gentler than his wonted
mood, must have sent a bevy of Zephyrs to waft us
along—are combinations which both nautical
amateurs and ignoramuses know duly how to
appreciate.
From the frequency of “squalls” and “blows”
off Hatteras, it were easy to imagine a telegraphic
communication existing between that head-land and
Bermuda, carried on by flashes of lightning and
tornadoes; or a game at bowls between Neptune
and Boreas, stationed one on either spot, and hurling
thunderbolts over the sea. This region, and that
included between 25° and 23° north latitude
termed by sailors the “horse latitudes,” are two of
the most unpleasant localities a voyager has to
encounter on his passage from a New-England
seaport to New-Orleans or Havana. In one he
is wearied by frequent calms, in the other, exposed
to sea sickness, and terrified by almost continual
storms.
On the eighth day out, we passed Bermuda—
that island-sentinel and spy of Britain upon our
shores. The position of this post with regard to
America, forcibly reminds me—I speak it with all
due reverence for the “Lion” of England—of a
lap-dog sitting at a secure distance and keeping
guard over an eagle volant. How like proud England
thus to come and set herself down before
America, and like a still beautiful mother, watch
with a jealous eye the unfolding loveliness of her
rival daughter—build up a battery d'espionage
against her shores, and seek to hold the very key
of her seas.
The Bermudas or “Summer islands” so called
from Sir George Summer, who was wrecked here
two centuries since—are a cluster of small coral
reefs lying nearly in the form of a crescent, and
rocks, which rear their fronts on every side like
battlements:—They are situated about two hundred
and twenty leagues from the coast of South
Carolina, and nearly in the latitude of the city of
Charleston.
The houses are constructed of porous limestone,
not unlike lava in appearance. This material was
probably ejected by some unseen and unhistoried
volcanic eruption, by which the islands themselves
were in all probability heaved up from the depths
of the ocean. White-washed to resist the rain,
their houses contrast beautifully with the green-mantled
cedars and emerald carpets of the islands.
The native Bermudians follow the sea for a livelihood.
They make good sailors while at sea; but
are dissipated and indolent when they return to their
native islands, indulging in drinking, gaming, and
every species of extravagance.
The females are rather pretty than otherwise;
with good features and uncommonly fine eyes.
Like all their sex, they are addicted to dress, in
which they display more finery than taste. Dancing
is the pastime of which they are most passionately
fond. In affection and obedience to their
“lords,” and in tenderness to their children, it is
said that they are patterns to all fair ones who may
have taken those, seldom audibly-spoken, vows, “to
love, honour, and obey”—oft times unuttered, I
verily believe, from pure intention.
St. George, the principal town in the islands, has
become a fashionable military residence. The
is varied by the constant arrival and departure of
ships of war, whose officers, with those of the
army, a sprinkling of distinguished civilians, and
clusters of fair beings who have winged it over the
sea, compose the most spirited and pleasant
society in the world. Enjoying a remarkably pure
air, and climate similar to that of South Carolina,
with handsomely revenued clergymen of the
Church of England, and rich in various tropical
luxuries, it is a desirable foreign residence and a
convenient and pleasant haven for British vessels
sailing in these seas.
This morning we were all in a state of feverish
excitement, impatient to place our eyes once more
upon land. Visions of green fields and swelling
hills, pleasantly waving trees and cool fountains—
groves, meadows, and rural cottages, had floated
through our waking thoughts and mingled with our
dreams.
“Is the land in sight, Captain?” was the only
question heard from the lips of one and another of
the expectant passengers as they rubbed their sleepy
eyes, poked their heads from their half-opened
state-room doors, or peeped from their curtained
berths. Ascending to the deck, we beheld the sun
just rising from the sea in the splendor of his
oriental pomp, flinging his beams far along the sky
and over the waters, enriching the ocean with his
radiance till it resembled a sea of molten gold,
gilding the dew-hung spars, and spreading a delicate
blush of crimson over the white sails. It was
nautical housewifery, its richness could not be enjoyed
from the decks.
At sea, the moment the sun rises, and when one
feels in the humor of quitting his hot state-room
and going on deck, the officer of the watch sings
out in a voice that goes directly to the heart—
“Forard there—wash decks!” Then commences
an elemental war rivalling Noah's deluge. That
was caused by the pouring down of rain in drops—
thié by the out-pouring of full buckets. From the
moment this flood commences one may draw back
into his narrow shell, like an affrighted snail, and
take a morning's nap:—the deck, for an hour to
come, is no place for animals that are not web-footed.
Fore and aft the unhappy passenger finds no way
of escaping the infliction of this purifying ceremony.
Should he be driven aloft, there “to banquet on the
morning,” he were better reposing on a gridiron or
sitting astride a handsaw. If below, there the
steward has possession, sweeping, laying the breakfast
table and making-up berths, and the air, a hundred
times breathed over, rushes from the opening
state-rooms threatening to suffocate him—he were
better engulfed in the bosom of a stew-pan.
To stand, cold, wet, and uncomfortable upon the
damp decks till the sun has dried both them and
him is the only alternative. If after all the “holy
stone” should come in play, he may then quietly
jump over-board.
The evenings, however, amply compensate for
the dust, floating particles and exhalations of the
land, is perfectly transparent, and the sky of a richer
blue. The stars seem nearer to you there; and the
round moon pours her unclouded flood of light,
down upon the sea, with an opulence and mellowness,
of which those who have only seen moonlight,
sleeping upon green hills, cities and forests, know
nothing. On such nights, there cannot be a nobler,
or prouder spectacle, as one stands upon the bows,
than the lofty, shining pyramid of snow-white canvass
which, rising majestically from the deck, lessens
away, sail after sail, far into the sky—each sheet
distended like a drum-head, yet finely rounded, and
its towering summit, as the ship rises and falls
upon the billows, waving like a tall poplar, swaying
in the wind. In these hours of moonlit enchantment,
while reclining at full length upon the deck,
and gazing at the diminished point of the flag-staff,
tracing devious labyrinths among the stars, the
blood has danced quicker through my veins as I
could feel the ship springing away beneath me like
a fleet courser, and leaping from wave to wave over
the sea. At such moments the mind cannot divest
itself of the idea that the bounding ship is instinct
with life—an animated creature, careering forward
by its own volition. To this are united the musical
sighing of the winds through the sails and rigging—
the dashing of the sea and the sound of the rushing
vessel through the water, which sparkles with phosphorescent
light, as though sprinkled with silver
dust.
A dark night also affords a scene to gratify curiosity
and charm the eye. A few nights since, an
exclamation of surprise from one of the passengers
called me from my writing to the deck. As, on
emerging from the cabin, I mechanically cast my
eyes over the sea, I observed that at first it had the
appearance of reflecting the stars from its bosom in
the most dazzling splendour, but on looking upward
to gaze upon the original founts of this apparently
reflected light, my eyes met only a gloomy
vault of clouds unillumined by a solitary star. The
“scud” flew wildly over its face and the heavens
were growing black with a gathering tempest. Yet
beneath, the sea glittered like a “lake of fire.” The
crests of the vast billows as they burst high in the
air, descended in showers of scintillations. The
ship scattered broken light from her bows, as
though a pavement of mirrors had been shivered in
her pathway. Her track was marked by a long
luminous train, not unlike the tail of a comet, while
gleams of light like lighted lamps floating upon the
water, whirled and flashed here and there in the
wild eddies of her wake. The spray which was
flung over the bows glittered like a sprinkling of
diamonds as it fell upon the decks, where, as it
flowed around the feet, it sparkled for some seconds
with innumerable shining specks. And so intense
was the light shining from the sea that I was enabled
to read with ease the fine print of a newspaper.
A bucket plunged into the sea, which whitened like
shivered ice, on its striking it, was drawn up full of
glittering sea-water that sparkled for more than a
gradually losing its lustre, finally disappeared in
total darkness.
Many hypotheses have been suggested by scientific
men to account for this natural phenomenon.
“Some have regarded it,” says Dr. Coates, “as the
effect of electricity, produced by the friction of the
waves; others as the product of a species of fermentation
in the water, occurring accidentally in
certain places. Many have attributed it to the
well-known phosphorescence of putrid fish, or to
the decomposition of their slime and exuviæ, and a
few only to the real cause, the voluntary illumination
of many distinct species of marine animals.
“The purpose for which this phosphorescence is
designed is lost in conjecture; but when we recollect
that fish are attracted to the net by the lights
of the fisherman, and that many of the marine shellfish
are said to leave their native element to crawl
around a fire built upon the beach, are we not
warranted in supposing that the animals of which
we have been speaking, are provided with these
luminous properties, in order to entice their prey
within their grasp?”
4. IV.
Land—Abaco—Fleet—Hole in the Wall—A wrecker's hut—
Bahama vampyres—Light houses—Conspiracy—Wall of Abaco
—Natural Bridge—Cause—Night scene—Speak a packet ship
—A floating city—Wrecker's lugger—Signal of distress—A
Yankee lumber brig—Portuguese Man-of-War.
“Land ho!” shouted a voice both loud and long,
apparently from the clouds, just as we had comfortably
laid ourselves out yesterday afternoon for our
customary siesta.
“Where away?” shouted the captain, springing
to the deck, but not so fast as to prevent our tumbling
over him, in the head-and-heels projection of
our bodies up the companion-way, in our eagerness
to catch a glimpse, once more, of the grassy earth;
of something at least stationary.
“Three points off the weather bow,” replied the
man aloft.
“Where is it?”—“which way?” “I see it”—“Is
that it captain—the little hump?” were the eager
exclamations and inquiries of the enraptured passengers,
who, half beside themselves, were peering,
straining, and querying, to little purpose.
It was Abaco—the land first made by vessels
bound to New Orleans or Cuba, from the north.
it from the small blue clouds, which, resting, apparently,
on the sea, floated near the verge of the
southern horizon. But with the spy glass, we could
discern it more distinctly, and less obscured by that
vail of blue haze, which always envelopes distant
objects when seen from a great distance at sea, or
on land.
As we approached, its azure vail gradually faded
away, and it appeared to our eyes in its autumnal
gray coat, with all its irregularities of surface and
outline clearly visible.
Slightly altering our course, in order to weather
its southern extremity, we ran down nearly parallel
with the shores of the island that rose apparently
from the sea, as we neared it, stretching out upon
the water like a huge alligator, which it resembled
in shape. Sail after sail hove in sight as we coasted
pleasantly along with a fine breeze, till, an hour before
the sun went down, a large wide-spreading
fleet could be discerned from the deck, lying becalmed,
near the extreme southern point of Abaco,
which, stretching out far into the sea, like a wall
perforated with an arched gateway near the centre,
is better known by the familiar appellation of
“The Hole in the Wall.”
“There is a habitation of some sort,” exclaimed
one of the passengers, whose glass had long been
hovering over the island.
“Where—where?” was the general cry, and
closer inspection from a dozen eyes, detected a
so wild and wretched in appearance, that we
unanimously refused it the honor of
“— A local habitation and a name!”
had seen for many a day; and notwithstanding our
vote of non-acceptance, it was not devoid of interest
in our eyes. It was evidently the abode
of some one of those demi sea-monsters, called
“Wreckers,” who, more destructive than the waves,
prey upon the ship-wrecked mariner. The Bahamas
swarm with these wreckers who, in small lugger-sloops,
continually prowl about among the islands,
“When the demons of the tempest rave,”
storm-tossed vessel, should it be driven among the
rocks or shoals with which this region abounds.
At midnight, when the lightning for a moment
illumines the sky and ocean, the white sail of the
wrecker's little bark, tossing amid the storm upon
the foaming billows, will flash upon the eyes of the
toiling seamen as they labour to preserve their
vessel, striking their souls with dread and awakening
their easily excited feelings of superstition.
Like evil spirits awaiting at the bed-side the release
of an unannealed soul, they hover around the struggling
ship through the night, and, flitting away at
the break of morning, may be discovered in the
the horizon with a sailor's hearty blessing sent after
them.
That light-houses have not been erected on the
dangerous head-lands and reefs which line the Bahama
channel, is a strange oversight or neglect on
the part of the governments of the United States
and England, which of all maritime nations are most
immediately concerned in the object. Suitable
light-houses on the most dangerous points, would
annually save, from otherwise inevitable destruction,
many vessels and preserve hundreds of valuable
lives. The profession of these marauders would
be, in such a case, but a sinecure; provided they
would allow the lights to remain. But, unless each
tower were converted into a well-manned gun-battery
the piratical character of these men will preclude
any hope of their permanent establishment.
Men of their buccaneering habits are not likely to
lie quietly on their oars, and see their means of
livelihood torn from them by the secure navigation
of these waters. They will sound, from island to
island, the tocsin for the gathering of their strength,
and concentrate for the destruction of these enemies
to their honest calling, before they have cast
their cheering beams over these stormy seas a
score of nights.
As we approached the Hole in the Wall, the
breeze which we had brought down the channel, stole
in advance and set in motion the fleet of becalmed
vessels, which rolled heavily on the long, groundswell,
about a league ahead of us. The spur or
is a high, wall-like ridge of rock, whose surface
gradually inclines from the main body of the island
to its abrupt termination about a quarter of a league
into the sea. As we sailed along its eastern side
we could not detect the opening from which it derives
its name. The eye met only a long black wall
of rock, whose rugged projections were hung with
festoons of dark purple sea-weed, and around whose
base the waters surged, with a roar heard distinctly
by us, three miles from the island.
On rounding the extremity of the headland, and
bearing up a point or two, the arch in the Cape
gradually opened till it became wholly visible, apparently
about half the altitude of, and very similar
in appearance to the Natural bridge in Virginia.
The chasm is irregularly arched, and broader at
thirty feet from the sea than at its base. The water
is of sufficient depth, and the arch lofty enough, to
allow small fishing vessels to pass through the aperture,
which is about one hundred feet in length
through the solid rock. There is a gap which
would indicate the former existence of a similar
cavity, near the end of this head-land. A large,
isolated mass of rock is here detached from the
main wall, at its termination in the sea, which was
undoubtedly, at some former period, joined to it by
a natural arch, now fallen into the water, as, probably,
will happen to this within a century.
These cavities are caused by the undermining of
the sea, which, dashing unceasingly against the
foundations of the wall, shatters and crumbles it by
and loosens large fragments of the rock, that
easily yield and give way to its increased violence;
while the upper stratum, high beyond the reach of
the surge, remains firm, and, long after the base has
crumbled into the sea, arches over like a bridge the
chasm beneath. By and by this falls by its own
weight, and is buried beneath the waves.
As the shades of night fell over the sea, and veiled
the land from our eyes, we had a fresh object of excitement
in giving chase to the vessels which, as the
sun went down among them, were scattered thickly
along the western horizon far ahead of us—ships,
brigs, and schooners, stretching away under all sail
before the evening breeze to the south and west.
We had lost sight of them after night had set in,
but at about half past eight in the evening, as well all
were peering through the darkness, upon the qui
vive for the strangers, a bright light flashed upon
our eyes over the water, and at the same moment
the look-out forward electrified us with the cry—
“A ship dead ahead, sir!”
The captain seized his speaking-trumpet, and
sprang to the bows; but we were there before him,
and discovered a solitary light burning at the base
of a dark pyramid, which towered gloomily in the
obscurity of the night. The outline of the object
was so confused and blended with the sky, that we
could discern it but indistinctly. To our optics it
appeared, as it loomed up in the night-haze, to be a
ship of the largest class. The spy glass was in immediate
requisition, but soon laid aside again.
Let me inform you that “DAY and NIGHT” marked
upon the tube of a spyglass, signifies that it may
be used in the day, and kept in the beckets at night.
We had been gathered upon the bowsprit and
forecastle but a few seconds, watching in silence
the dark moving tower on the water before us, as
we approached it rapidly, when we were startled by
the sudden hail of the stranger, who was now hauling
up on our weather bow—
“Ship-ahoy!” burst loudly over the water from
the hoarse throat of a trumpet.
“Ahoy!” bellowed our captain, so gently back
again through the ship's trumpet, that the best “bull
of Bashan” might have envied him his roar.
“What ship's that?”
“The Plato of Portland,” with a second bellow
which was a very manifest improvement upon the
preceding.
“Where bound?”
“New-Orleans!”
Now came our turn to play the querist. “What
ship's that?”
“The J. L., eleven days from New-York, bound
to New-Orleans.”
“Ay, ay—any news?”
“No, nothing particular.”
We again moved on in silence; sailing in company,
but not always in sight of each other, during
the remainder of the night.
A delightful prospect met our eyes, on coming on
deck the morning after making the Hole in the
Wall. The sea was crowded with vessels, bearing
fortuitous circumstance, a fleet of vessels, bearing
the flags of various nations, had arrived in the Bahama
channel at the same time, and now, were
amicably sailing in company, borne by the same
waves—wafted by the same breeze, and standing
toward the same point. Our New-York friend, for
whom, on casting our eyes over the lively scene we
first searched, we discovered nearly two leagues
from us to the windward, stretching boldly across the
most dangerous part of the Bahama Banks, instead
of taking, with the rest of the fleet, the farther but less
hazardous course down the “Channel”—if a few
inches more of water than the Banks are elsewhere covered
with, may with propriety be thus denominated.
A little to the south of us, rocking upon the
scarcely rising billows, was a rough clumsy looking
craft, with one low, black mast, and amputated
bowsprit, about four feet in length, sustaining a jib
of no particular hue or dimensions. Hoisted upon
the mast, was extended a dark red painted mainsail,
blackened by the smoke, which, issuing from a
black wooden chimney amidships, curled gracefully
upward and floated away on the breeze in thin blue
clouds. A little triangular bit of red bunting fluttered
at her mast head; and, towed by a long line
at her stern, a little green whale-boat skipped and
danced merrily over the waves. Standing, or rather
reclining at the helm—for men learn strangely indolent
postures in the warm south—with a segar between
his lips, and his eye fixed earnestly upon the
J. L., was a black-whiskered fellow, whose head
by a tassel, which dangled over his left ear.
A blue flannel shirt, and white flowing trowsers,
with which his body and limbs were covered, were
secured to his person by a red sash tied around the
waist, instead of suspenders. Two others similarly
dressed, and as bountifully bewhiskered, leaned listlessly
over the side gazing at our ship, as she dashed
proudly past their rude bark. A negro, whose
charms would have been unquestionable in Congo,
was stretched, apparently asleep, along the main-boom,
which one moment swung with him over
the water, and the next supended him over his
chimney, whose azure incense ascended from his
own altar, to this ebony deity, in clouds of grateful
odour.
“What craft do you call that?” inquired one of
the passengers of the captain.
“What? It's a wrecker's lugger.—Watch him
now!”
At the moment he spoke, the lugger dropped
astern of us, came to a few points—hauled close on
the wind, and then gathering headway, bounded off
with the speed of the wind in the direction of the
New-York packet ship, which the wrecker's quicker
and more practised eye had detected displaying signals
of distress. Turning our glasses in the direction
of the ship, we could see that she had grounded
on the bank, thereby affording very ample illustration
of the truth of the proverb, “The more haste
the less speed.”
About the middle of the forenoon the wind died
a brig loaded with lumber. The remaining vessels
of the fleet were fast dispersing over the sea—this
Yankee “fruiterer” being the only one sailing within
a league of us.
These lumber vessels, which are usually loaded
with shingles, masts, spars, and boards, have been
long the floating mines of Maine. But as her
forests disappear, which are the veins from whence
she draws the ore, her sons will have to plough the
earth instead of the ocean. Then, and not till then,
will Maine take a high rank as an agricultural state.
The majority of men who sail in these lumber vessels
are both farmers and sailors; who cultivate
their farms at one season, fell its timber and sail
away with it in the shape of boards and shingles to
a West India mart at another. Jonathan is the
only man who knows how to carry on two trades at
one time, and carry them on successfully.
For their lumber, which they more frequently
barter away than sell, they generally obtain a return
cargo of molasses, which is converted by our “sober
and moral” fellow-countrymen into liquid gunpowder,
in the vats of those numerous distilleries, which,
like guide—posts to the regions of death, line the sea
skirts of New-England!
The smooth bottom, above which we were suspended,
through the deceptive transparency of the
water, appeared, though eighteen feet beneath us,
within reach of the oar. But there were many objects
floating by upon the surface, which afforded
us more interest than all beneath it.
Among these was the little nautilus which, gaily
dancing over the waves, like a Lilliputian mariner,
“Spreads his thin oar and courts the rising gale.”
by a breeze gentler than an infant's breathing. We
endeavoured to secure one of them more beautiful
than its fellows, but like a sensitive plant it instantly
shrunk at the touch, and sunk beneath the surface;
appearing beneath the water, like a little, animated
globule tinged with the most delicate colours. This
singular animal is termed by the sailors, “The
Portuguee' man-o'-war,” from what imaginary resemblance
to the war vessels of His Most Christian
Majesty I am at a loss to determine; unless
we resort for a solution of the mystery to a jacktar,
whom I questioned upon the subject—
“It's cause as how they takes in all sail, or goes
chuck to bottom, when it 'gins to blow a spankin'
breeze,”—truly a fine compliment to the navarchy
of Portugal!
This animal is a genus of the mollusca tribe,
which glitters in the night on the crest of every
bursting wave. In the tropical seas it is found
riding over the gently ruffled billows in great numbers,
with its crystalline sail expanded to the light
breeze—barks delicate and tiny enough for fairy
“Queen Mab.” Termed by naturalists pharsalia,
from its habit of inflating its transparent sail, this
splendid animal is often confounded with the nautilus
pompilius, a genus of marine animals of an entirely
distinct species, and of a much ruder appearance,
where in the tropical seas, while the living animal
is found swimming upon the ocean in every latitude.
Dr. Coates, in describing the Portuguese man-of--war
(pharsalia) says, that “it is an oblong animated
sack of air, elongated at one extremity into a conical
neck, and surmounted by a membraneous expansion
running nearly the whole length of the body,
and rising above into a semi-circular sail, which can
be expanded or contracted to a considerable extent
at the pleasure of the animal. From beneath the
body are suspended from ten to fifty, or more little
tubes, from half an inch to an inch in length, open
at their lower extremity, and formed like the flower
of the blue bottle. These I cannot but consider as
proper stomachs, from the centre of which depends
a little cord, never exceeding the fourth of an inch
in thickness, and often forty times as long as the
body.
“The group of stomachs is less transparent, and
although the hue is the same as that of the back,
they are on this account incomparably less elegant.
By their weight and form they fill the double office
of a keel and ballast, while the cord-like appendage,
which floats out for yards behind, is called by seamen
“the cable.” With this organ, which is supposed
by naturalists, from the extreme pain felt,
when brought in contact with the back of the hand,
to secrete a poisonous or acrid fluid, the animal secures
his prey.” But in the opinion of Dr. C. naturalists
in deciding upon this mere hypothesis have
concluded too hastily. He says that the secret will
of the organ itself. “The cord is composed of a
narrow layer of contractile fibres, scarcely visible
when relaxed, on account of its transparency. If
the animal be large, this layer of fibres will sometimes
extend itself to the length of four or five yards.
A spiral line of blue, bead-like bodies, less than the
head of a pin, revolves around the cable from end
to end, and under the microscope these beads appear
covered with minute prickles so hard and sharp
that they will readily enter the substance of wood,
adhering with such pertinacity that the cord can
rarely be detached without breaking.
“It is to these prickles that the man-of-war owes
its power of destroying animals much its superior in
strength and activity. When any thing becomes
impaled upon the cords, the contractile fibres are
called into action, and rapidly shrink from many
feet in length to less than the same number of inches,
bringing the prey within reach of the little tubes, by
one of which it is immediately swallowed.
“Its size varies from half an inch to six inches
in length. When it is in motion the sail is accommodated
to the force of the breeze, and the
elongated neck is curved upward, giving to the animal
a form strongly resembling the little glass
swans which we sometimes see swimming in goblets.
“It is not the form, however, which constitutes
the chief beauty of this little navigator. The lower
part of the body and the neck are devoid of all
colours except a faint irridescence in reflected
lights, and they are so perfectly transparent that the
them. The back becomes gradually tinged as we
ascend, with the finest and most delicate hues that
can be imagined; the base of the sail equals the
purest sky in depth and beauty of tint; the summit
is of the most splendid red, and the central part is
shaded by the gradual intermixture of these colours
through all the intermediate grades of purple.
Drawn as it were upon a ground-work of mist, the
tints have an aerial softness far beyond the reach
of art.”
5. V.
A calm—A breeze on the water—The land of flowers—Juan
Ponce de Leon—The fountain of perpetual youth—An irremediable
loss to single gentlemen—Gulf Stream—New-Providence—
Cuba—Pan of Matanzas—Blue hills of Cuba—An armed cruiser—
Cape St. Antonio—Pirates—Enter the Mexican Gulf—Mobile—
A southern winter—A farewell to the North and a welcome to the
South—The close of the voyage—Balize—Fleet—West Indiaman
—Portuguese polacre—Land ho!—The land—Its formation—Pilot
or “little brief authority”—Light-house—Revenue cutter—Newspapers—“The
meeting of the waters”—A singular appearance—
A morning off the Balize—The tow-boat.
During the period we lay becalmed under a
burning sun, which, though entering its winter
solstice retained the fervour of summer fire, we
passed the most of our time in the little cockle-shell
were not confined enough) riding listlessly upon the
long billows or rowing far out from the ship, which,
with all her light sails furled, rolled heavily upon
the crestless billows, suggesting the anomalous idea
of power in a state of helplessness.
An hour before sunset our long-idle sails were
once more filled by a fine breeze, which, ruffling the
surface of the ocean more than a league distant,
we had discerned coming from the Florida shore,
some time before it reached us; and as it came
slowly onward over the sea, we watched with no
little anxiety the agitated line of waves which
danced merrily before it, marking its approach.
A faintly delineated gray bank lining the western
horizon, marked the “land of flowers” of the romantic
Ponce de Leon. Can that be Florida! the
Pasqua de Flores of the Spaniards—the country of
blossoms and living fountains, welling with perpetual
youth! were our reflections as we gazed
upon the low marshy shore. Yet here the avaricious
Spaniard sought for a mine more precious
than the diamonds and gold of the Incas! a fountain
whose waters were represented to have the
wonderful property of rejuvenating old age and perpetuating
youth! Here every wrinkled Castillian
Iolas expected to find a Hebé to restore him to the
bloom and vigour of Adonis! But alas, for the
bachelors of modern days, the seeker for fountains
of eternal youth wandered only through inhospitable
wilds, and encountered the warlike Seminoles,
who, unlike the timorous natives of the newly discovered
determined resolution. After a long and fruitless
search, he returned to Porto Rico, wearied, disappointed,
and no doubt with his brow more deeply
furrowed than when he set out upon his singularly
romantic expedition.
While we glided along the Florida shore, which
was fast receding from the eye, a sudden boiling
and commotion of the sea, which we had remarked
some time before we were involved in it, assured us
that we had again entered the Gulf Stream, where
it rushes from the Mexican Sea, after having made
a broad sweep of eighteen hundred miles, and in
twenty days after emerging from it in higher latitudes.
Our course was now very sensibly retarded
by the strong current against which we sailed,
though impelled by a breeze which would have
wafted us, over a currentless sea, nine or ten miles
an hour. In the afternoon the blue hills of Cuba,
elevated above the undulating surface of the island,
and stretching along its back like a serrated spine,
reared themselves from the sea far to the south;
and at sunset the twin hills of Matanzas, for which
sailors' imaginations have conjured up not the most
pleasing appellation—could be just distinguished
from the blue waves on the verge of the ocean; and
receding from the sea, with an uneven surface, the
vast island rose along the whole southern horizon,
not more than four or five leagues distant. The
Florida shore had long before disappeared, though
several vessels were standing toward it, bound apparently
into Key West, between which and Havana
American colours, hovering during the whole afternoon.
Cape St. Antonio, the notorious rendezvous of
that daring band of pirates, which, possessing the
marauding without the chivalrous spirit of the old
buccaneers, long infested these seas, just protruded
above the rim of the horizon far to the south-east.
We soon lost sight of it, and in the evening, altering
our course a little to avoid the shoals which are scattered
thickly off the southern and western extremity
of Florida, ran rapidly and safely past the Tortugas
—the Scylla and Charybdis of this southern latitude.
We already begin to appreciate the genial influence
of a southern climate. The sun, tempered by
a pleasant wind, beams down upon us warm and
cheerily—the air is balmy and laden with grateful
fragrance from the unseen land—and though near
the first of December, at which time you dwellers
under the wintry skies of the north, are shivering
over your grates, we have worn our summer garments
and palm-leaf hats for some days past. If
this is a specimen of a southern winter, where quietly
to inhale the mellow air is an elysian enjoyment—henceforth
sleighing and skating will have
less charms for me.
We are at last at the termination of our voyage
upon the sea. In three days at the farthest we expect
to land in New-Orleans. But three days upon
the waveless Mississippi to those who have been
riding a month upon the ocean, is but a trifle. After
an uncommonly long, but unusually pleasant passage
last evening at sun set.
The tedious monotony of our passage since leaving
Cuba, was more than cancelled by the scenes
and variety of yesterday. We had not seen a sail
for four or five days, when, on ascending to the deck
at sunrise yesterday morning, judge of my surprise
and pleasure at beholding a fleet of nearly fifty vessels
surrounding us on every side, all standing to
one common centre; in the midst of which our own
gallant ship dashed proudly on, like a high mettled
courser contending for the victory. To one imprisoned
in a companionless ship on the broad and
lonely ocean so many days, this was a scene, from
its vivid contrast, calculated to awaken in the bosom
emotions of the liveliest gratification and pleasure.
A point or two abaft our beam, within pistol shot
distance, slowly and majestically moved a huge,
British West Indiaman, her black gloomy hull
wholly unrelieved by brighter colours, with her red
ensign heavily unfolding to the breeze in recognition
of the stars and stripes, floating gracefully at
our peak. Farther astern, a taunt-rigged, rakish
looking Portuguese polacca (polaque) carrying even
in so light a breeze a “bone in her teeth,” glided
swiftly along, every thing set from deck to truck.
We could distinctly see the red woollen caps and
dark red faces of her crew, peering over the bow,
as they pointed to, and made remarks upon our
of us, we had observed a heavy sailing Dutch ship,
as indeed all Dutch ships are; about eleven o'clock
we came up with, and passed her, with the same
facility as if she had been at anchor. On all sides
of us vessels of nearly every maritime nation were
in sight; and in conjectures respecting them, and
in admiring their variety of construction and appearance,
we passed most of the day, elated with the
prospect of a speedy termination to our voyage.
Before we had completed dinner, the cry of
“Land ho!” was heard from the main-top, and in
the course of half an hour we saw from the deck,
not exactly land, but an apology for it, in the form
and substance of an immense marsh of tall, wild
grass, which stretched along the horizon from west
to east ad infinitum. This soil, if you may term
it such, is formed by the accumulation and deposition
of ochreous matter discharged by the Mississippi,
whose turbid waters are more or less charged with
terrene particles, so much so, that a glass filled with
its water appears to deposit in a short time a sediment
nearly equal to one-twelfth of its bulk. The
matter discharged by the river, condensed and
strengthened by logs, trees, grass, and other gross
substances, is raised above the ordinary tide waters,
upon which a soil is formed of mingled sand and
marl, capable of producing the long grass, which
not only lines the coast in the vicinity of this river,
but extends many miles into the interior, where it
unites with the cypress swamps which cover the
greater part of the unreclaimed lowlands of Louisiana.
the afternoon, when the light-house at the South-East
passage, the chief embouchure of the Mississippi,
appeared in sight but a few miles ahead; passing
this, we received a pilot from a fairy-like pilot-boat,
which, on delivering him, bounded away from us
like a swift-winged albatross. About four o'clock
the light-house at the South-West passage lifted its
solitary head above the horizon. The breeze freshening,
we approached it rapidly, under the guidance
of the pilot, who had taken command of our ship.
When nearly abreast of the light-house, a fierce little
warlike-looking revenue cutter ran alongside of us,
and lowering her boat, sent her lieutenant on board,
to see that “all was straight.” He cracked a bottle
of wine with the captain, and leaving some late
New-Orleans papers, took his departure. For the
next half hour the quarter-deck appeared like a school-room—buzz,
buzz, buzz! till the papers were read
and re-read, advertisements and all, and all were
satisfied. About six in the evening we cast anchor at
the mouth of the South-West pass, in company not
only with the fleet in which we had sailed during the
day, but with a large fleet already at anchor, waiting
for tide, pilots, wind, or two-boats. In approaching
the mouth of the river, we observed, to us, a novel
and remarkable appearance—the meeting of the
milky, turbid waters of the Mississippi, with the
pale green of the ocean. The waters of the former,
being lighter than the latter, and not readily mingling
with it, are thrown upon the surface, floating
like oil to the depth of only two or three feet. A
wake, which is slowly covered by the uniting of the
parted waters. The line of demarkation between
the yellowish-brown water of the river, and the clear
green water of the sea, is so distinctly defined, that
a cane could be laid along it. When we first discovered
the long white line, about two miles distant,
it presented the appearance of a low sand beach.
As we reached it, I went aloft, and seating myself
in the top-gallant cross-trees, beheld one of the most
singular appearances of which I had ever formed any
conception. When within a few fathoms of the discoloured
water, we appeared to be rushing on to
certain destruction, and when our sharp keel cut and
turned up the sluggish surface, I involuntarily shuddered;
the next instant we seemed suspended between
two seas. Another moment, and we had
passed the line of division, ploughing the lazy and
muddy waves, and leaving a dark transparent wake
far astern. We are hourly expecting our tow-boat—
the Whale. When she arrives we shall immediately,
in the company of some other ships, move up for
New-Orleans. The morning is delightful, and we
have the prospect of a pleasant sail, or rather
tow, up the river. A hundred snow-white sails
are reflecting the rays of the morning sun, while
the rapid dashing of the swift pilot-boats about us,
and the slower movements of ships getting under
weigh to cross the bar, and work their own way up
to the city—together with the mingling sounds of
stern commands, and the sonorous “heave-ho-yeo!”
of the labouring seamen, borne upon the breeze,
the scene. Our Whale is now in sight, spouting,
not jets d'eau, but volumes of dense black smoke.
We shall soon be under weigh, and every countenance
is bright with anticipation. Within an hour
we shall be floating upon the great artery of North
America, “prisoners of hope” and of steam, on our
way to add our little number to the countless thousands
who throng the streets of the Key of the Great
Valley through which it flows.
| The South-west | |