CHAPTER I

Summary

It was a cold morning, the 9th of February, 1846, that we left New York, in the bark Undine, Capt. Appleton, for Pará. Our fellow-passengers were Mr. Smith, the U. S. Consul of that port, his lady, and two young gentlemen, in quest, like ourselves, of adventures. Scarcely out of sight of Sandy Hook, a furious north-wester burst upon us, and for a week we dashed on before it, at a rate to startle a landsman, had not the accompanying motion speedily induced that peculiar state in which one would as lief not be as be, and inclined to consider a bed beneath the waters as preferable to present torture. But the golden-haired spirit at the prow always smiled hopefully, and gallantly the noble bark sped onward to calmer waters and warmer skies. Here the sea was all loveliness, and, night by night, the scantily apparelled sky of the north was disappearing before the as steadily advancing brilliance of the tropics. We watched the gradual descending of the north star; and when at last it sank below the horizon, it seemed as though an old and familiar friend had deserted us,—one whose place was not to be supplied even by the splendour of the southern cross.

By the twentieth day we were near land, to the eastward of Salinas, having seen and enjoyed the usual sea-sights. Most memorable of these was a sunset, as we lay becalmed.