CHAPTER VIII.
At Sea.
September 23d.—
“The sea again! the swift, bright sea!”—
and, at the rate of twelve miles the hour,
“Away, away upon the rushing tide
We hurry faster than the foam we ride,
Dashing afar the waves, which round us cling,
With strength like that which lifts the eagle’s wing,
Where the stars dazzle and the angels sing.
We scatter the spray,
And break through the billows,
As the wind makes way
Through the leaves of willows!”
We had expected to meet at Rio de Janeiro, the frigate Brandywine, the ship the Congress came to relieve; but instead, Commodore McKeever found orders awaiting him there to proceed to Montevideo. In obedience to these we got under way, early on the 17th inst.; but, after dropping down the bay a couple of miles, the land breeze failed us and we again came to anchor. For three successive days, we made a like attempt to get to sea, but to no purpose; and, on the morning of the 21st, employed a steam tug to tow us out. The British Admiral had previously proffered the use of a small steamer, in attendance upon his flag; and now sent her, to aid the little tow-boat in stemming with her stately burden, the tide just beginning to set in. When well outside we took a smacking breeze; and, though scarce two days at sea, have run five hundred miles—nearly half the distance to Montevideo.
There was no special reason for regret at the delay in getting off. The position we occupied while detained was the finest possible for the study of the imagery amidst which we lay. But for some accidental cause of the kind, we should not have had an opportunity of enjoying it, and I availed myself of the chance to secure a panoramic drawing, embracing points of beauty not commanded from the customary anchorage of men-of-war. During the detention, Captain McIntosh took me with him in two or three excursions upon the water in his gig, followed by walks on shore of interest and novelty. One of these was to Praya Grande, opposite Rio; and another to the bay of St. Francis Xavier, called by the English Five-fathom Bay, on the same side of the water, but nearer the sea.
The formation of the land on the eastern side of the harbor is less bold and lofty than that on which the city lies. The mountains are more distant, and the spurs from them come down in rounded hills, interspersed with valleys and broad interval lands. Praya Grande and Praya San Domingo form one gently curving beach on this shore, some three miles in length, extending northward from the fragmentary islet—on the bluff crest of which is perched the little chapel of Boa Viagem—to a beautifully rounded promontory jutting far westward into the bay. They are contiguous parishes, seemingly but one settlement, and are rural and village like. The green banks along the water side are overhung with trees, and the houses every where interspersed with large gardens and ornamented enclosures. The population of the two places amounts to about three thousand. The residences, for the most part, are well built, and many of them tasteful in architecture, and fanciful in their embellishment. In comparison with the city opposite, the whole district is pure and cleanly; and, in place of the villanous smells too often met there, abounds with the mingled fragrance of the orange, cape jessamine, heliotrope, and unnumbered other blossoms—constituting a sweetness more fresh and grateful than the choicest ‘mille fleurs’ of the perfumist. Wild roses, multiflora, and clustering flowers of varied hues, mantle the tops and fringe the sides of the hedges of myrtle and mimosa, aloes and cacti which border the roads, while many of the pleasure gardens, of which we had glimpses through the iron railings and open gateways, are adorned with plants and shrubs of novel forms and gorgeous bloom, amidst fountains of greater or less beauty.
We made our way into the open country, meeting, at one or two points, features in the scenery quite homelike: one—a meadow of coarse grass edged by a copse and thickets interspersed with single trees; and another, a large field on a hill-side having the earth freshly turned up, like newly ploughed ground with us, over which noble mango trees, with their thickly set leaves, and rounded tops, were scattered like oaks in an English park. On every hand there was a great variety of growth in shrub and tree, and it was with no slight degree of pleasure that I recognized among others, as old friends at the Sandwich Islands, not only the cocoa-nut, palm and banana, but also the bread-fruit, the tamarind, and alucrites triloba—or candle tree.
Not knowing how far the road we were following might lead, before it would again conduct towards the water, we were about to retrace our steps the same way, when, a question accidentally put to a negro passing, led to a return under his guidance over a hill, by a wild and romantic bridle-path. This was so overhung by densely interwoven growth, that the glare of midday soon became twilight to us, and the heat of a burning sun tempered to the coolness of a grotto. At many points of the entire walk, the views of the bay and city in the distance, and of the mountains overhanging them were of unsurpassed beauty. Indeed, there was no end to the forms of loveliness by which we were surrounded, and to the associations in memory and affection brought to my mind by them. With the expectation of spending many a tedious month of our long exile on the adjoining waters, it was a delight to know that walks of such freshness and beauty are so near and so accessible.
The row to the bay of St. Francis Xavier was made the succeeding afternoon. A bold and strongly defined promontory of granite, separates this sheet from the waters of the general harbor, and makes it so land-locked as to give to it the aspect of a secluded lake. Till we had doubled this, I had no idea of the depth to which the bay sweeps seaward behind the promontory, or of the feeling of remoteness from civilized life which its general features at once impart. The wild mountains, with a rude hut clinging here and there to their uncultivated sides; the primitive look of the lowly cottages of fishermen stretched along a distant beach; and the canoes drawn up on the sands, or resting lightly upon the water, again transported me to the South Seas, and I felt as if at the Marquesan or Society Islands, rather than within a half a dozen miles of the metropolis of a magnificent empire. Just so untamed, just so Indian-like, I am told, were the entire surroundings of the bay of Rio, till within the last thirty or forty years.
The eastern side of this inlet is formed by a long curving beach of sand, called the Praya Carahy. It fronts an extensive plain of low alluvial ground through which, at either end, two streams from the mountains make their way. Landing at the mouth of the most southern of these, with orders for the boat to meet us at that to the north, we walked upon the sands the intervening distance, in alternate admiration of the scenery inland, on the one side, and the sportings of a heavy surf on the other. This illumined by the rays of the declining sun, rose high in emerald masses, till, cresting into ten thousand diamonds, it thundered on the beach and came rushing to our feet in sheets of foam.
September 27th.—The fresh wind mentioned in my last date brought us, the next evening, on soundings off the Rio de la Plata. A change then suddenly occurred with every indication of heavy weather. The mercury in the barometer fell low; and during the night there was heavy rain, with a good deal of thunder and lightning, while meteors, called by seamen, compesant—a corruption of corpo santo or holy body—flitted about the yard-arms and mast-heads of the ship. All these were forerunners of weather more like a gale than any thing experienced since leaving Norfolk: indeed, a regular pampero, a storm of wind so called from the pampas or boundless plains between the Rio la Plata and Patagonia, over which the cold south and south-west winds from the polar regions sweep, corresponding in force and temperature to our fiercest north-west winds at home. The storm was not of long continuance, and yesterday afternoon we made the land near Cape St. Mary, the northern entrance to the river. We lay off shore for the night, and sighting the land again this morning, soon after made the little islet of Lobos, a chief landmark in entering the Plata from the north, seventy miles from Montevideo. It derives its name from the multitude of seal frequenting it. Many of these were seen, as we approached, basking on the rocky shores and swimming about in the water. A strong and offensive odor was also very perceptible. The island is a governmental possession of the Republic of Uruguay, but leased for a long term of years to a gentleman of Montevideo, and yields a handsome income in skins and oil.
The river is here one hundred and twenty miles wide. Its northern shore only, of course, is visible. This is low and sandy, marked here and there by a green hillock. With a glass, great numbers of horses, in vast droves as if wild, could be seen grazing in the distance; also the church towers of Maldonado, the town next in size in the Republic to Montevideo. From all we can learn, it is in such decay and depopulation at present, that the euphony of its name is its chief attraction.
Midway between the island of Lobos and Montevideo are the highlands of Monte Negro. The next landmark is the isle of Flores, surmounted by a light-house, fifteen miles distant from the anchorage. This light we are in momentary expectation of making.
Montevideo, October 1st.—On the night of the 29th ult., after having run a sufficient distance beyond the light of Flores to bring us abreast of Montevideo, we dropped anchor without having caught sight of any shipping in the roadstead, or discovering any signs of the town. On the lifting of a dense fog the next morning, the first objects discernible were the men-of-war of a French squadron about five miles in shore of us. Shortly after, the Mount—a conical hill situated on the western side of a circular indenture in the river, constituting the harbor—which gives name to the place, was disclosed; and lastly, the town itself on a point opposite, distant from it a mile or more, in a direct line across the water. The whole landscape is as different as possible from that at Rio de Janeiro. It is low and level, without rock or tree: a soft verdure covered the shore and gleamed in the sun, like so much velvet, as it came peering on the eye through the fog bank.
The Mount is an isolated hill rising gradually and regularly on all sides, at an angle of 45°, to a height of 480 or 90 feet. It is crowned by a small rectangular fortress, above which the lantern of a pharos rises some twenty or thirty feet. Being in possession of a besieging force, no light is shown from it, that additional embarrassment may be placed on the commerce of the port. Midway between the Mount on the west and the town on the east, a smaller hill rises two or three miles inland, in like manner in regular lines from the plain. This too is crowned by a little fort, which, like the other, is in possession of the besieging party. It is called the “Cerrito,” or little hill, in contradistinction to the other, known as the “Cerro,” or hill par excellence. The town is situated on a peninsula of tufa rock, a half mile in length by a quarter in width, rising gently from the water on three sides to an elevation of eighty or a hundred feet, much in the shape of a tortoise’s back. From a distance it presents a mass of compactly built, white, flat-topped houses, one and two stories high, of Spanish aspect, with multitudes of small, square turrets or miradors overtopping them, from the midst of which, on the central height, rise the lofty roofs, dome and double towers of a cathedral.
It was in vain we searched among the shipping of the outer roads, where alone there is sufficient depth of water for a frigate, for the broad pennant of Commodore Storer. The sloop-of-war St. Louis, however, was recognized in the inner harbor. On communicating with her, we learned that the Brandywine had sailed for Rio de Janeiro ten days ago, again leaving orders for the Congress to follow. Our trip has thus been for naught. We sail again for Brazil, with the first fair wind, and I shall defer all observation in the city to the more favorable opportunities of an after visit.
The general view around us is more homelike than any thing seen by us since leaving the United States. The growth is no longer tropical. The sky, the temperature of the air, the tinting of the clouds at sunrise and sunset are all those of the Northern States. Yesterday, the Sabbath, was altogether like a fine, bright, fresh and transparent day in October on the Hudson; though, while October there is the gradual freshening of autumn into winter, here it is the softening of spring into summer. The mercury in Fahrenheit has not yet fallen below 50°; still the change from the heat of Rio was felt so sensibly, on reaching the latitude of the river, that flannels, cloth clothes, and overcoats were found comfortable, if not absolutely necessary. The region of the La Plata is famed for the transparency of its atmosphere in fine weather. To this probably is to be attributed, in part at least, the great beauty of the sunsets at this place. We have been delighted by two already gazed on; the one remarkable for the exquisite delicacy of its tints in blue and gold, amber, pink and pearl, and the other, equally soft and beautiful at first, but afterwards gorgeous to sublimity, from the reflections in crimson and gold of a canopy of fleecy clouds spread widely over the heavens.
At Sea.
October 12th.—We made an attempt to leave Montevideo on the 2d inst., but succeeded in making a small change only in our anchorage. At the end of three days, we had scarcely passed the island of Flores, fifteen miles from the city, though we had weighed anchor not less than three times each day in the hope of taking a final departure. The difficulty was caused by a succession of calms, thick fogs, head winds and adverse tides characteristic of the season here. It was not till the 6th that we again passed Lobos and were fairly outside.
Since clearing Cape St. Mary, we have been experiencing all the vicissitudes of the sea: first in a long stretch, off our course, far to the south-east, close hauled upon a head wind; and, since the 9th inst., when this changed in our favor, in a rapid but boisterous run of more than half the distance to Rio de Janeiro. While thus careering on our way, in addition to the ever-varying rush and roar—the cresting, breaking and foaming of the billows behind and around us, we have found an interesting relaxation on deck in watching the sportings and unwearied movements of unnumbered sea-birds, following closely in the broad and troubled wake of our ship, in pursuit of the fragments of food thrown overboard from the different messes at all hours of the day. It is not often that so rich a windfall as the waste of such a ship falls to their lot. To this fact they seem fully alive, and were indefatigable in making the best of their good fortune. Amidst flocks of beautiful Cape pigeons, outrivalling in numbers the crows of Crum Elbow[[2]] in an autumnal evening, were to be seen the gigantic albatross, sweeping round on wide-expanded and motionless wing; the sea-mew and man-of-war bird, black as ravens; the booby, and any quantity of the stormy petrel, treading the water more confidently and more securely than did the unbelieving Peter.
[2]. A well known point on the Hudson River, overhung by precipitous cliffs, a favorite resort of crows.
The Cape pigeon—Procellaria Capensis—is beautiful on the wing or as seen tossing gracefully on the water. Its size is that of a large dove. Its breast is snow-white, with back, wings and tail of slate color, thickly set with oval spots of white, having much the effect on the eye of a tasteful dress in second mourning. Several were taken with hook and line, baited with pork, and one by the mere entanglement of its wings in a line. They are not so pretty or symmetrically formed, on close inspection as at a distance; and in place of the gentleness of the dove, which they at first so much resemble, are as snappish and resentful in spirit against their captors as the most carnivorous of their species.
The albatross—Diomedia Exulans—is white, with wings and back varying in different birds from black to a light brown. It is an ugly-looking bird, about the size of a domestic goose, with large head and great goggle eyes. The wings are very long—from eleven to fourteen feet from tip to tip. This interferes much with the facility of rising when seated on the water. It is only with evident effort and an awkward floundering that they mount again after having alighted; but then, it is a wonder to observe the ease and rapidity of their flight, and their ability, with seemingly motionless wing, to sweep in wide circuit round and round the ship, and still keep up with her in her swiftest career; and this day after day, without apparent exhaustion or fatigue, though sailing at the rate of two hundred miles and more in the twenty-four hours. The fiercer the winds and the more tumultuous the towering and thundering of the waves, the more joyous are their sportings, and the more triumphant their mastery of the elements.
The booby—Sula Bassana—is somewhat like the albatross in general appearance, but less clumsy, smaller, more angular in outline and pinion, and less majestic in flight. The man-of-war bird—Fregata Pelicana—is less adventurous in its wanderings over the sea. Its form is more that of the eagle—hence one of its names, Tachypetes Aquilas—with long feathers on the wings and tail, and its color a jetty black. It owes its English name to a supposition of the ignorant, that in returning to the land it heralds the approach of a ship; but, only from the fact that, like the ship it seeks the shelter of the port on the approach of a storm, and makes an earlier and surer arrival.
The most constant in its companionship with us, in every latitude and in all states of the weather, is the little petrel—Thelassadroma Pelagica—a small swallow-tailed bird, about the size, with much of the appearance, of the common house martin. Wilson in his ornithology gives a graphic description of these birds as seen in a gale, “coursing over the waves, down the declivities and up the ascents of the foaming surge, that threatens to bury them, as it bursts over their heads; sweeping again through the hollow trough of the sea, as in a sheltered valley, and again mounting with the rising billow, skimming just above its surface, occasionally dipping their feet in the water and throwing it up with additional force: sometimes leaping, with their legs parallel on the surface of the roughest wave, for yards in succession; meanwhile continually coursing from side to side of the ship’s wake, making excursions far and wide to the right and to the left—now a great way ahead, now shooting far astern and returning again as if the vessel was stationary, though often running at the rate of ten knots the hour.”
The most singular faculty of these birds, however, is that of standing, and of running on the face of the water, with the greatest apparent facility. When any greasy matter is thrown overboard they instantly collect around it with greedy and clamorous chatterings; and, facing to the windward, with their long wings expanded and their little webbed feet pattering the water, eagerly seize the booty. It is the lightness of their bodies and the force of the wind against their wings that enable them so readily to do this. In calm weather they perform the same manœuvre, by keeping their wings just so much in action as to prevent their feet from sinking below the surface. According to Buffon, it is this habit which has given to the whole genus the name they bear, from the walking on the water of the Apostle Peter. It is amusing, and partly vexatious, to see a clumsy albatross or great booby come swooping down among them, while they are thus collected around their food, and, flapping them away with its monstrous wings, at one mouthful rob them of a whole meal. Greasy substances are their choicest food, and their little bodies become a mass of oil: so much so, that dried and strung on a skewer, they are burned on some of the islands of the Atlantic as a substitute for candles.
The boisterousness of the weather has made the frequent reduction of sail necessary—at times, almost to bare poles. This has afforded a more than ordinary opportunity of witnessing the exposure and daring intrepidity required from the sailor in the discharge of his duty. The taking in of sail and the reefing of topsails in so large a ship, by a crew of four hundred men, emulous of excelling in skill and expertness, is an exciting scene even in a moderate breeze. When this occurs amidst the rushing winds and howling storm, with such masses of heavy canvas as compose our sails, flapping seemingly in unmanageable force, and snapping like thunder in the gale, it is frightful to look aloft. While the masts are bending to the wind and the ship careening in the water, you see the yards covered with hundreds of the crew with no guard from destruction in the giddy height, but the habit of keeping their feet firmly on the foot-ropes, while their hands and arms are occupied in overcoming the fearful thrashings of the sails, and in gathering in the canvas and binding it down with the reef-points. Some of them on the upper spars, like birds in the topmost branches of a tree, sweep to and fro over the roaring gulf below; and, occasionally a man or boy is beheld clinging to a slender spar or single sheet at the very mast-head, two hundred feet from the deck, disentangling a halliard or conductor—causing one’s nerves to shake under the apprehension of seeing him hurled, in some pitch or roll of the frigate, far overboard into the raging sea, or dashed to death at your feet on deck.
October 16th.—The mountains and islets around the harbor of Rio are in full view, and I will close this section of my record. In doing this, I must follow the subject matter of my last date—the birds of the sea—by a word on some of its fishes. In a calm yesterday we were surrounded by a great number of dolphin—Cyrophæna hippuris—certainly, as seen moving in its blue waters, the most beautiful of the inhabitants of the deep. When full grown, it is from two to three feet in length, elegant and symmetrical in shape, and brilliant in colors: the prevailing hue being mazarine blue, or Pompadour, shading from the back to the under parts into emerald and gold, with fins and tail of green running rapidly into a bright yellow. Its motions are easy and graceful, and were watched, in great numbers, under the advantages of a smooth sea and brilliant sun. Dolphin are so common in all tropical latitudes, and so frequently seen, that I might not have thought of taking note of them in this instance, but for an assertion respecting them recently met in a book on natural history, which, emanating from a fellow of Oxford, ought to be of good authority. After stating the fact that the shape of this fish, as given in heraldic and classic representations, is entirely poetical and untrue, the author—Wood—adds: “indeed almost the whole history of the dolphin is imaginary—very poetical, but very untrue. The red and blue of the heraldic lion are not less fabulous than the changing colors of the dying dolphin, so dear to poetry. Alas! our unpoetical dolphin, when we have harpooned him and brought him to the deck is only black and white, and all the change that he makes is that the black becomes brown in time, and the white gray.” This assertion I know, from personal observation in company with many witnesses, to be an error. In the first voyage I ever made, I had an opportunity of observing and admiring the varying and beautiful colors of the dolphin while dying; and now, fully proved to myself the truthfulness of the record of it then made. Mr. G——, secretary to our commander-in-chief, caught one with a hook and line, and quickly drew him over the stern on deck. I happened to be present, and, though the dying throes even of a soulless fish can scarcely be looked on without sympathy, the effect on its coloring could not be watched without admiration. The first change which took place, after the fish reached the deck, was of the whole surface into a bright yellow or gold, spotted, like the speckled trout, with deep blue; then the whole became blue again, the spots of a deeper hue still remaining distinctly marked; a third change was into a pure and spotless silver, over which prismatic colors, like those in an opal under a shifting light, passed rapidly and tremulously for a few moments, when the beautiful dolphin became brown and gray like any other dead fish.
It is possible that, when struck with a harpoon, the violence of the shock may be such as to produce death so suddenly that these changes have passed away, before the fish can be drawn on board, as their duration is but momentary. Either this is the truth, or Mr. Wood is not authority in the case. You may still believe therefore that
“The dolphin, ’mid expiring throes,
More exquisite in beauty grows,
As fades the strength of life:
And tintings bright of sapphire blue,
And rainbow lights of every hue
More exquisite each moment shew,
As fainter grows the strife.”
Portuguese men-of-war—Physalia physalis—have also been floating past us. These are molluscæ with long feelers, and furnished with an air-bag which they have the power of inflating at pleasure when moving on the surface. This is provided with apertures at either end, by which they can expel the air, or take in sail, as a seaman would say, when they wish to sink. This air bag, when inflated, is of an oval shape, and of the tenuity almost of a soap-bubble, and exhibits like it, though in stronger shades, many of the hues of the prism. The beauty discoverable in many of these animals is said by naturalists to equal any thing in organic nature.
A passage in Montgomery’s Pelican Island applied to the convoluted nautilus, which rises and floats on the surface of the water, but spreads no sail, is perhaps more truthfully descriptive of this man-of-war:
“Light as a flake of foam upon the wind,
Keel upwards, from the deep emerged a shell,
Shaped like the moon ere half her horn is filled;
Fraught with young life, it righted as it rose,
And moved at will along the yielding water.
The native pilot of this little bark,
Put out a tier of oars on either side;
Spread to the wafting breeze a two-fold sail,
And mounted up, and glided down the billow
In happy freedom, pleased to feel the air,
And wander in the luxury of light.”
Should you be disposed to think that such commonplace observations indicate the tedium and monotony of sea life—the paucity of its resources for occupation and amusement—and are not worth the time required for the record, I must take shelter from the reproach in the example of a voyager no less illustrious than Humboldt, who, at the end of forty years, confesses to the delight still afforded by reminiscences of such pastime on the sea. True, we may not, like him, mingle our admiration with thoughts of deep philosophy, or make our observations subservient to generalizations in science; still, we can take equal delight in the varied phenomena of the sea, and, in humble adoration, thus “look through nature up to nature’s God,” and rejoice in the infinitude and perfection of his manifold works.