GEOLOGY—NAUTICAL SQUABBLES.
About this period I began to dabble a little in geology, for which
science I had acquired a taste by inheritance, and, in some degree,
from companionship with more than one of the Scottish school, who, at
the beginning of this century, were considered more than half-cracked,
merely for supporting the igneous theory of Dr. Hutton, which,
with certain limitations and extensions, and after thirty years of
controversy, experiment, and observation, appears to be now pretty
generally adopted. Sailors, indeed, have excellent opportunities
of making geological observations, for they have the advantage of
seeing Nature, as it were, with her face washed, more frequently than
most other observers; and can seldom visit any coast, new or old,
without having it in their power to bring off something interesting to
inquirers in this branch of knowledge. That is, supposing they have
eyes to see, and capacity to describe, what meets their observation.
Some people cannot go beyond a single fact or two actually lying
under their very noses; and you might as well expect them to fly
as to combine these particulars, or to apply them to the purposes
of science at large. Others, again, from the same want of accurate
comprehension, or from sheer mental indolence, jump at once from the
most trifling local circumstances to the broadest and most unwarranted
generalisations.
It would be difficult, if not quite impossible, by dint of any number
of precepts, to drive geology, or any other kind of instruction,
into the noddles of some folks; so that it will often seem an even
chance with a blockhead, whether, when he is obliged to think, he will
generalise too much or too little. I remember, for example, once lying
at anchor, for some weeks, in the harbour of Vigo, on the west coast
of Spain, during which time, for a piece of fun, the first lieutenant
desired one of the youngsters on board to write a letter to his friends
at home.
“What in the world, sir, am I to say?” asked the noodle of a fellow,
after pondering over the subject for a long time.
“Say?—Why, describe the country, and the manners of the people—tell how
they behaved to you.”
To work went the youth, sorely bothered; and though he had been on
shore many times, he could extract nothing from his memory. The first
lieutenant, however, who was inexorable, insisted upon the letter being
written, and locked him up in his cabin till he intimated, by a certain
signal, that the epistle was ready for inspection. The following was
the result of four hours’ painful labour:—
“All Spain is hilly—so is this. The natives all wear wooden shoes, and
they are all a set of brutes, of which I take this to witness, that one
of them called me a Picaroon.
“I remain, &c.”
Although geology be a topic often intensely interesting on the spot, it
is not always easy to give it this character to people at a distance,
who care very little whether the world has been baked or boiled, or
both, or neither. Most persons, indeed, remain all their lives quite
indifferent whether the globe has come into its present shape by
what is called Chance, that is, I suppose, by means which we cannot
investigate, and can only guess at,—or whether its various changes
are susceptible of philosophical examination, and their history of
being recorded with more or less precision. The sound geologist of the
present day, it will be observed, professes to have nothing to do with
the origin of things, but merely investigates the various physical
revolutions which have taken place on the earth’s surface, by the
instrumentality of natural causes. The great charm of this fascinating
science, accordingly, though it may be difficult to say why, consists
in the manner in which the Reason and the Imagination are brought
together, in regions where two such travellers could hardly have been
expected to meet.
Many practical and popular questions also mingle themselves up with
the scientific inquiries of geology. I remember, for instance, even
when a boy, taking a great interest, on this account, in the plaster of
Paris quarries of Nova Scotia. This formation shews itself generally
above ground, and is of a dingy white colour, the parts exposed to
the air being crumbly or decomposed. The workmen having removed the
superincumbent earth, and the rotten rock, as they call it, blast
the solid gypsum with gunpowder, and, having broken it into blocks
sufficiently small to be handled, sell it to the American dealers.
A number of vessels are daily employed in carrying it to New York,
Philadelphia, and Baltimore. In my early notes, I find it gravely
stated, as a thing generally understood, that most of this gypsum
was sold to the millers in the United States, for the purpose of
adulterating their flour! Prejudice apart, however, the fact is quite
the reverse of what I believed in my youth; for, by an ingenious system
of regulations, the Americans contrive that the best quality should
have an advantage over bad in leaving the country. Such, indeed, is
the success of these measures, that I can safely say I never saw a
barrel of it that was not excellent.
Besides this capital flour, the Americans export biscuit of a delicious
quality to all parts of the globe; and those only who have known the
amount of discomfort produced by living on the ‘remainder biscuit
after a voyage,’ perhaps not good of its kind originally, can justly
appreciate the luxury of opening a barrel of crackers from New York!
By the way, it is a curious and not unimportant fact in nautical
affairs, though only discovered of late years, that the best way to
keep this description of bread is to exclude the air from it as much
as possible. In former times, and even for some years after I entered
the navy, the practice was, to open the bread-room frequently, and,
by means of funnels made of canvass, called windsails, to force the
external air amongst the biscuit, in order, as was supposed, to keep it
sweet and fresh. Nothing, it now appears, could have been devised more
destructive to it; and the reason is easily explained. It is only in
fine weather that this operation can be performed, at which seasons the
external air is generally many degrees hotter than the atmosphere of
the bread-room, which, from being low down in the ship, acquires, like
a cellar, a pretty uniform temperature. The outer air, from its warmth,
and from sweeping along the surface of the sea, is at all times charged
with a considerable degree of vapour, the moisture of which is sure
to be deposited upon any body it comes in contact with, colder than
the air which bears it along. Consequently, the biscuit, when exposed
to these humid currents, is rendered damp, and the process of decay,
instead of being retarded, is rapidly assisted by the ventilation. This
ancient system of airing is now so entirely exploded, that in some
ships the biscuit is placed in separate closed cases, in which it is
packed like slates, with great care, and the covers are then caulked or
sealed down. By this contrivance, no more biscuit need be exposed than
is absolutely necessary for the immediate consumption of the crew. If I
am not mistaken, this is the general practice in American men-of-war,
and it certainly ought to be adopted by us.
I remember once, when sailing in the Pacific Ocean, about a couple of
hundred leagues to the south of the coast of Peru, falling in with
a ship, and buying some American biscuit which had been more than a
year from home. It was enclosed in a new wine puncheon, which was, of
course, perfectly air-tight. When we opened it, the biscuit smelled
as fresh and new as if it had been taken from the oven only the day
before. Even its flavour and crispness were preserved so entire, that I
thought we should never have done cranching it.
We were not particularly fortunate in making many captures on the
Halifax station, in our early cruises, after the war broke out. But
the change which the renewal of hostilities made in our habits was
great. Instead of idly rotting in harbour, our ship was now always at
sea, on the look-out,—a degree of vigilance, which, as will be seen,
had its reward in due season. In the meantime, we discovered that
a midshipman’s life was full of interest and curiosity, especially
to those who thirsted to see new countries and new climates. Of this
matter of climate, I find a characteristic enough touch in one of my
early letters.
“We have been on a cruise for many months; but we did not take a single
prize, although all the rest of the ships of the station have been
making captures. I hope we shall be more fortunate next time, as we
intend to go to a better place. Our last cruise carried us a long way
to the southward, where the weather was so very hot, that it became
impossible to do any thing in comfort, night or day. In the night time
we could hardly sleep, and in the day we were scorched by the sun.
When our candles were lighted, they melted away by degrees, and often
tumbled on the table by their own weight, or, perhaps, fell plump into
the victuals!”
Even at this distance of time, I have a most painfully distinct
recollection of these dirty tallow candles in the midshipmen’s
birth—dips, I think, they were called—smelling of mutton fat, and
throwing up a column of smoke like that from a steamboat’s chimney.
These ‘glims’ yielded but little light, by reason, possibly, of a huge
wick occupying more than half the area of the flame, and demanding the
incessant application of our big-bellied snuffers to make the darkness
visible.
This, in its turn, reminds me of a piece of cock-pit manners, which
truth obliges me to divulge, although, certainly, not very much to
our credit. It was the duty of the unfortunate wight who sat nearest
the candle—grievously misnamed the ‘light’—to snuff off its monstrous
cauliflower of a head from time to time; and certainly his office was
no sinecure. Sometimes, however, either from being too much absorbed
in his book, or from his hand being tired, he might forget to ‘top the
glim,’ as it was called—glim being, I suppose, a contraction of the
too obvious word glimmer. On these occasions of neglect, when things
were returning fast to their primeval darkness, any one of the company
was entitled to call out “Top!” upon which all the rest were bound to
vociferate the same word, and he who was the last to call out “Top!”
was exposed to one of the following disagreeable alternatives—either to
get up and snuff the candle, at whatever distance he might be seated,
or to have the burning snuff thrown in his face by any one who was
within reach, and chose to pinch it off with his finger and thumb.
It is true there was always some trouble in this operation, and some
little risk of burning the fingers, to say nothing of the danger to His
Majesty’s ship; but the delightful task of teaching a messmate good
breeding, by tossing a handful of burning tallow-candle snuff in his
eyes, was, of course, a happiness too great to be resisted.
In speaking thus of the midshipmen’s birth, and of their occasional
ruggedness of manners, I should be doing wrong to leave an impression
that they were a mere lawless set of harumscarum scamps. Quite the
contrary; for we had a code of laws for our government, which, for
precision and distinctness of purpose, might have rivalled many of
those promulgated by the newest-born states of the world, in these
days of political parturition. I observe, that young countries, like
young people, whether in a midshipman’s mess, or any where else,
delight in the indulgence of the fond and false idea, that it is easy
to regulate the fluctuations of human nature exactly as they please,
by the mere force of written constitutions. They always ‘remember to
forget,’ that institutions, to be in the smallest degree effective in
practice, must be made to fit the existing state of society, and that
society cannot possibly be made to fit them. They almost all run away,
however, with the vainest of vain notions, that established habits, old
prejudices, with all the other fixed and peculiar circumstances of the
time and place in which they find themselves, have become, of a sudden,
so pliable, that they can be essentially and speedily modified by
artificial legislation alone! On this fallacious principle we framed a
set of regulations for our mess, of which I recollect only one, giving,
I admit, rather a queer idea of the state of things in our maritime
world. It ran thus:—“If any member of the larboard mess shall so far
forget the manners of a gentleman as to give the lie direct to one of
his messmates, he shall be fined one dollar.”
This fine, it must be observed, was intended purely as a propitiation
to the offended dignity of the mess, and was quite independent of the
personal arrangements which, on such occasions, generally took place in
the cock-pit outside. These battles royal were fought across a chest,—I
don’t mean with pistols, but with good honest fisty-cuffs. The only
difficulty attending this method of settling such matters consisted
in the shifts to which the parties were compelled to resort, to
conceal the black eyes which, in most cases, were the result of these
single combats. It would, of course, have been quite incorrect in the
commanding officer to have overlooked such proceedings—even supposing
the parties to retain a sufficiency of optics to do their duty. The
usual resource was to trust to the good-nature of the surgeon, who
put the high contending parties on the sick list, and wrote against
their names “Contusion;” an entry he might certainly make with a safe
conscience!
This innocent way of settling disputes was all very well, so long
as the mids were really and truly boys; but there came, in process
of time, a plaguy awkward age, when they began to fancy themselves
men, and when they were very apt to take it into their heads that, on
such occasions as that just alluded to, their dignity, as officers
and gentlemen, would be compromised by beating one another about the
face and eyes across a chest, and otherwise contusing one another,
according to the most approved fashion of the cock-pit. Youths, at
this intermediate age, are called Hobbledehoys, that is, neither man
nor boy. And as powder and ball act with equal efficacy against these
high-spirited fellows as against men of more experience, fatal duels
do sometimes take place even amongst midshipmen. I was once present at
a very foolish affair of this kind, which, though it happily ended in
smoke, was so exceedingly irregular in all its parts, that, had any
one fallen, the whole party concerned would most probably have been
hanged!
A dispute arose between three of these young men, in the course of
which, terms were bandied about, leaving a reproach such that only the
ordeal of a duel, it was thought, could wipe out. It was late in the
day when this quarrel took place; but as there was still light enough
left to fire a shot, the party went on deck, and quietly asked leave to
go on shore for a walk. I happened to be the only person in the birth
at the time who was not engaged in the squabble, and so was pressed
into the service of the disputants to act as second. There would have
been nothing very absurd in all this, had there been another second
besides me, or had there existed only one quarrel to settle—but between
the three youths there were two distinct disputes!
One of these lads, whom we shall call Mr. A, had first to fight with
Mr. B, while Mr. C was second to Mr. B; and then Mr. A, having disposed
of Mr. B, either by putting him out of the world, or by adjusting the
matter by apologies, was to commence a fresh battle with Mr. C, who,
it will be observed, had been second to his former antagonist, Mr. B!
The contingency of Mr. A himself being put hors de combat appears not
to have been contemplated; but the strong personal interest which Mr.
C (the second to Mr. A’s first antagonist) had in giving the affair a
fatal turn, would have been the ticklish point for our poor necks, in
a court of justice, had Mr. A fallen. Poor fellow! he was afterwards
killed in action.
More by good luck than good management, neither of the first shots took
effect. At this stage of the affair, I began to perceive the excessive
absurdity of the whole transaction, and the danger of the gallows,
to which we were all exposing ourselves. I therefore vehemently
urged upon the parties the propriety of staying further proceedings.
These suggestions were fortunately strengthened by the arrival of a
corporal’s guard of armed marines from the ship, under the orders of an
officer, who was directed to arrest the whole party. There was at first
a ludicrous shew of actual resistance to this detachment; but, after
some words, the affair terminated, and the disputants walked off the
field arm in arm, the best friends in the world!