PASSAGE FROM VALPARAISO TO CALLAO.
FLARE UP OF THE PACIFIC.—SONGS OF SEAMEN.—SAILORS ON SHORE.—LOSS OF
THE SAMSON OF OUR SHIP.—THE SETTING SUN AT SEA.—OUR ASTOR-HOUSE
SAILOR.—THE MAD POET OF THE CREW.—LAND HO!—ASPECT OF
CALLAO.—APPEARANCE OF THE NATIVES.—THE BURIAL ISLE.
“Our pennant glitters in the breeze,
Our home is on the sea:
Where wind may blow, or billow flow,
No limits to the free:
No limits to the free, my boys,
Let wind and wave waft on,
The boundless world of waters is,
My merry men, our own.”
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 18. We tripped our anchors this morning and stood out
to sea from the bay of Valparaiso. While getting under way, a boat from
the British ship Daphne came alongside with dispatches for Admiral
Seymour, in command of the Collingwood, on the coast of California. No
sooner were these received, and orders given to make sail, than three
other boats were seen starting from the shore at the top of their speed.
Our ship was hove-to till they came up. Two of them had communications
to merchants in Callao. The third had in her two of our runaway sailors,
who had been picked up by the police, and whom we were very sorry to see
again; for they were notoriously the two most worthless fellows on
board. But we were not, it seems, to get rid of them in this way. So
true is it that a bad penny always comes back.
THURSDAY, MARCH 19. Before coming into the Pacific, our imaginations
were filled with dreams of its majestic tranquillity. But if the
exhibition it made of itself last night be a fair specimen of its
character, it is a living libel on its own name. It flared up like an
enraged maniac, and stove in our cabin windows, which even Cape Horn had
spared. Its rage seemed wholly unprovoked; for the sky was almost free
of clouds, and even the few which did darken its face, moved on lazily
as those in which the winds have fallen asleep. The moon looked down on
the uproar in perfect calmness. Her light fell on the crest of the wave,
soft as dew on the death-foam of the savage.
One of our boys ran away at Valparaiso. He had but just recovered from
the effects of a fall down the main-hatch. He probably thought the best
method of escaping the chances of another fall, would be to give the
hatch the widest berth possible. But the poor lad will find worse
hatches on land than he ever yet stumbled through at sea. Here he broke
only a limb, but there he may break his peace of conscience, and his
hope of heaven. But sailors are of all beings in the world the most
thoughtless. The monitions of the future are lost in the impulses of the
present. They have been known, for some temporary gratification, to run
from a ship with two years pay due them, and to forfeit the whole by
that act of folly. This running commences in rum and ends in ruin.
FRIDAY, MARCH 20. We have the wind directly aft. Our fore studding-sails
are out like the wings of a bird on the breast of a gale. We have run
within the last two days four hundred and forty miles. This is good
sailing considering we have six months’ provision on board, and lie
consequently too deep for the greatest speed. The air is balmy, and the
songs of our sailors, at sunset, rose exultingly into its blue depths. A
sailor always sings with heart. His music rolls out like a dashing
stream from its mountain source. It is never gay; it always has a deep
vein of melancholy. If a few more lively notes mingle with the strain,
they come only at intervals, like flakes of moonlight between the
cypress shadows which mantle the marbles of the dead.
He is a gay being when he gets upon shore; but he is then no longer on
his own element. Give him a day’s liberty, and he will commit more
follies than he would in six months at sea. If he charters a hack, he
will ride out on the box with the driver and make the hold, as he terms
the interior, welcome to any one who may be disposed to use it. If he
hires a horse, he will ride him at his utmost speed, though he knows no
more than you do where he shall bring up. He goes to church on the
Sabbath, and if no one offers him a seat, brings in a huge billet of
wood, or a stone, and moors ship in the middle of the aisle. He sits
there grave as a deacon, never once nods during the sermon, and when the
contribution box comes along for sending missionaries to the heathen,
drops in the last dollar which his fiddler has left him.
SATURDAY, MARCH 21. We lost at Valparaiso the Samson of our ship. He was
from Bremen, and of German extraction. He stood seven feet in his
stockings. His arm was as large as the leg of an ordinary man. He could
carry a water tank, which any two others among the crew could only lift.
He went with the rest upon shore on liberty, fell in with a few of his
countrymen, drank too freely, and stayed beyond his time.
He would have returned on board, but he shrunk from the disgrace of
corporal punishment. He had the finest sensibilities, and looked upon a
blow, inflicted in the shape of a chastisement, as a brand of indelible
infamy. To escape this he had no resource, as he supposed, but to
conceal himself till after our ship should sail. Every effort was made
to recover him, but without success. His conduct had been
unexceptionable. He had never fallen under censure. His fidelity to duty
had won the regard and confidence of all. His loss was the more
regretted as it flowed from a misapprehension on his part. He would not
have been punished had he returned on board. His next liberty day might
have been withheld, and that would have been all.
He would have been a tower of strength in an engagement. He could have
wielded a sky-sail yard as a boarding-pike. But in the centre of all
these giant energies gushed a fountain warm and fresh as that in the
heart of a child. He carried with him his mother’s picture, and hung
over it with that fondness which absence cannot wean or age chill. Keep
that picture, thou noble tar! all is not lost while the love of that
remains.
SUNDAY, MARCH 22. The sky covered with a soft haze, the air balmy, our
ship moving four and five knots; divine service at 11 o’clock. The
subject of the discourse, the power of evil habit; the progress of crime
traced; its incipient insignificance, its tremendous results; the
stealing an apple leading to highway robbery; an irreverent word paving
the way to profaneness; a play of chance for amusement leading to the
hazards of the gaming table; the social glass ending at last in delirium
and death. But a future state revealing the more full effects of an evil
habit. Here the traces of guilt dimly apparent on the man, there deep
and indelible on his soul; here an outcast from the community, there an
outcast from heaven; here suffering the loss of a transient temporal
good, there an immortality of bliss. God grant these admonitions may
arrest some poor sailor in his career of folly and ruin.
MONDAY, MARCH 23. The wind has been faint and directly aft through the
day; still we have made a hundred miles in the last twenty-four hours.
We have just had a splendid sunset. The whole western horizon was a sea
of cloud and flame.
The setting sun is beautiful at sea,
And throws a richer splendor on the eye
Than when on land beheld; the cause may be
A brighter, bolder amplitude of sky.
And then the fathomless immensity
Of waters, and the twilight clouds, which lie
Along the west, and which at sea appear
As islands in a golden atmosphere.
But then there follows this resplendent sight
An hour of deeper beauty to the shore;
The glowing west has darkened into night,
The stars are out, and from their cisterns pour
On tree and tower a flood of mellow light,
Through which the crags in sheeted silver soar;
While caverned cliffs the billows’ dirge prolong,
And roll it back a murmuring tide of song.
And this is rapture—thus alone to stray
Along the moon-lit shore, and hear each wave
Repeat its dying anthem round the bay,
Or rush exulting down some sparry cave
With death-defiant roar; though on its way,
With all its swelling peans, to the grave.
And then ’tis hushed again, except the song
Of breaking billows, which the cliffs prolong.
Oh, you may talk of banquetings and balls—
Of wit and merriment at masquerade—
Of revels held in old baronial halls—
Or music murmured in the serenade:
Give me the lay of distant waterfalls,
The song of May birds in the forest shade,
And that deep anthem, which the choiring waves
Of ocean roll from her melodious caves.
TUESDAY, MARCH 24. What ups and downs there are on board a man-of-war!
The young Englishman who left the elegancies of the Astor-House, and
shipped as a common sailor on board our frigate, continued to win upon
the friendship of the crew. He was hail fellow well met with the whole.
He was always at his post, and prompt and cheerful in duty. No weather
ever sent him below, when it was his watch on deck. He struck out so
strongly, that he soon gained a position aloft, and had his eye on being
captain of the main-top.
But on reaching Valparaiso his _nom de guerre_ took flight. He was
recognised as the son of a wealthy broker in Manchester, England; and
the important intelligence had just reached here that his uncle,
recently deceased, had left him twenty thousand pounds. The correctness
of this intelligence was ascertained from sources which left no doubt;
and still he hesitated about applying for his discharge, and declared he
had never been so happy as since he turned sailor. He brought on board a
letter of credit on a large banking-house in New York, but had never
availed himself of it. He at last yielded to the importunities of his
friends at Valparaiso, and applied for his discharge, which Captain Du
Pont, with the sanction of our commodore, ordered to be made out. He
shook hands with his shipmates, wished them stiff breezes and snug
harbors, and in his tarpaulin and roundabout, left his station on the
main-yard for a London coach.
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 25. We have among our crew a youth who is touched with
insanity. The hallucination takes every variety of shape, and every
degree of force. A few days since he fancied that he had but one friend
on board, and wanted a lantern at noon, with which to look him up.
To-day his conviction has been that he shall not see the sun rise again?
As the glorious orb went down, he stationed himself on the steps of the
accommodation-ladder to take his farewell look. There was as much poetry
in his fine wild features as in the tragical idea that had brought him
there. He poured his mournful adieu to the sun in the lines of Manfred,
which seemed more his own than the guilty misanthrope’s who uttered
them:
“Thou material God!
And representative of the Unknown—
Who chose thee for his shadow. Thou chief star!
Sire of the seasons! monarch of the climes,
And those who dwell in them! for near or far,
Our inborn spirits have a tint of thee,
Even as our outward aspects;—thou dost rise
And set in glory. Fare thee well!
I ne’er shall see thee more. As my first glance
Of love and wonder was for thee, then take
My latest look: thou wilt not beam on one
To whom the gifts of life and warmth have been
Of a more fatal nature. He is gone!”
THURSDAY, MARCH 26. We discovered a sail this afternoon on our starboard
bow, and stood down for her. As our noble ship, with her heavy batteries
frowning death, neared her, she run up the American ensign at her peak.
We captured her in mimic war. She proved to be the Balæna, a whale-ship,
or, as our sailors term it, a spouter, from New Bedford. She had been
out five months. She had two men at her main, two at her fore, and one
at her mizen top, looking out for whales. Success to them. I would as
soon seek a tree-top in a thunder-storm. The mimic fight took place
after she had shown her colors, and was gone through with merely to
accustom our men to some of the evolutions of a real engagement.
Our crew is composed in too great a proportion of young men. They have
not that solidity and strength of muscle which our heavy guns require.
But they are very active, and would pour themselves, as boarders, in a
living tide on the enemy. Our best crews are those enlisted after war
has been declared. Thousands who now seek our civil marine, would in
that event rush to our armed decks.
The Balæna must have been christened by some lady of New Bedford who has
a touch of Latinity about her. The name, it is true, signifies a whale,
but no vulgar vandal spouter, but an elegant Roman balæna—such as might
have danced on the harp-strings of a Lucretius, or streamed in the
insignia of Cleopatra’s barge, as it rocked on the amber waves of
Cydnus, and threw back the sun’s rays from its decks of burnished gold.
Give me that lady who can throw a classic charm around a whale-ship. A
cabbage in her hands would soon take the colors and perfume of the rose.
FRIDAY, MARCH 27. Our slumbers were broken this morning by the cry of
land ho! from the watch in the fore-top. We had been under shortened
sail through the night for fear of shooting too far ahead. But we made
an excellent landfall. As day glimmered, the barren isle of San Lorenzo
loomed into the light on our starboard bow. It was sufficiently near to
throw its jagged outline full on the eye.
The sea breeze soon sprung up, when we made sail, and doubling the
northern extremity of San Lorenzo, the harbor of Callao opened upon us.
We moved up its ample expanse with our top-gallant sails set, and came
to in handsome style with our starboard anchor. We were welcomed by
clouds of gulls and pelicans, which floated around our ship and cast the
sea into shadow. Had they possessed anthropophagous propensities, we
might have felt some solicitude for our personal safety.
Our sails were hardly clued down when our vice-consul, Mr. Johnson, came
on board. Our first inquiry was for letters from home. Deep was our
disappointment when told there were none. Almost six months from the
United States and not a single mail yet,—not even a straggling letter!
Think of that, ye who cannot leave your homes for a week without a
letter each day. We may have children born without knowing it, and find
them, on our return, some three years old. It is no wonder they timidly
stare at their strange fathers, and take refuge in their mothers’ arms.
SATURDAY, MARCH 28. Callao falls immeasurably short of the picture which
my imagination had painted. It is a collection of low, dingy dwellings,
occupying the rippling verge of a vast sand-plain. The only beings which
give to it an air of life are buzzards; or here and there a fisherman
hawking the trophies of his hook; or an Indian woman on a donkey, riding
straddle.
We encountered on reaching the landing two immense piles of wheat, which
had been shipped from Chili. Each pile must have had in it not less than
twenty thousand bushels. Neither had any covering, and needed none, as
it never at this season rains or snows here. Nature allows man to be as
lazy as possible, and he seems to have availed himself of the privilege
to the utmost extent. Even the dog which slumbers on the trottoir will
sooner hazard your heel than break his dreams. The children run half
naked; and the women, too indolent to hook the tops of their dresses,
throw a loose shawl over their shoulders, and nurse their infants as
publicly as they would take out a pocket-handkerchief.
The fort, a place of great strength in its day, has been dismantled. It
had become the rallying point of the disaffected. A few revolutionists
could here set the arms of the whole republic at defiance. The
government, standing in greater dread of domestic than foreign foes,
issued a decree for its destruction. The government must be weak indeed,
which is obliged to consult its safety in the destruction of the
defences of its territory.
SUNDAY, MARCH 29. We are lying in the bay of a Roman Catholic country
where no place of worship is allowed to Protestants. There is not a hall
or chapel within the limits of Peru where they who differ from the papal
see can assemble on the Sabbath. Repeated efforts have been made to
obtain permission to erect such a place, but as yet without success. The
archbishop of Lima, who gets his instructions from Rome, has set his
face against it, and the government is at present too weak, were it so
disposed, to set his ecclesiastical authority at defiance.
It would not be amiss for some of our Catholic bishops to come here and
preach up a little toleration to their brethren; and, before they go
away, I wish they would pass over to the barren isle of San Lorenzo. On
this bleak, herbless rock, which is frequented only by pelicans and
vultures, they will find the graves of nearly all the Protestants who
have died in Peru for centuries past. Not one of those who lie here
could have procured himself a grave on the mainland.
But we have one resource on board ship which no proscription can reach.
We carry our chapel with us on the open deck. Our capstan is a pulpit
which has never been overawed. We have our worship on the Sabbath, in
whatever port we may lie, without consulting the authorities on shore.
Our privilege is wide as the ocean, and the shores which it laves. Would
it were so with every denomination of Christians. The faggot which
bigotry kindles may burn the recusant first, but is pretty sure in the
end to consume those who light it.
Our forefathers were driven out of the old world by the intolerance of
an arbitrary authority, attempting to enthrone itself on the human
conscience. I seem to stand once more beneath the wintry trees which
threw their bleak shadows on the rock where they first knelt, in their
wild inhospitable home. Their memory stands apart, as a thing by itself,
sacred and imperishable in the reverence and love of millions. Hail to
THE PILGRIM FATHERS.
They were men of giant soul,
Men of faith and deeds sublime;
Men whose acts will reach their goal
In the mighty depths of time.
They resigned, at God’s behest,
Kindred, home, their fathers’ graves—
Pilgrims o’er the ocean’s crest,
Mid the thunder of its waves.
Here—where pathless forests frowned,
Wailing torrents rolled their foam,
Wolves and wild-men prowled around—
Rose their altars and their home.
What to them were stately shrines,
Gorgeous dome, or towering spire?
’Neath their sturdy oaks and pines
Rose their anthems, winged with fire!
When oppression reached the coast,
With the tyrant’s purpose flushed,
They to peril’s deadliest post
For their God and country rushed.
As the steep volcano throws
From its burning breast the rock,
They o’erthrew their columned foes,
In the battle’s fiery shock.
All that consecrates their fame,
All that sanctifies our hearth,
All that freedom here can claim;
In their noble minds had birth.
By their dead, on Bunker’s steep!
By their bones, in Monmouth’s plains
We their faith and trust will keep,
While their blood rolls in our veins!
Thou who heard’st the Pilgrim’s prayer—
Nerved him for the doubtful field—
Made his sacred cause thy care,
O’er us cast thy mighty shield!