DECEMBER 12.
Since we entered the tropic, the rains have been incessant, and most violent; but the wind was brisk and favourable, and we proceeded rapidly. Now we have lost the trade-wind, and move so slowly, that it might almost be called standing still. On the other hand, the weather is now perfectly delicious; the ship makes but little way, but she moves steadily: the sun is brilliant; the sky cloudless; the sea calm, and so smooth that it looks like one extended sheet of blue glass; an awning is stretched over the deck; although there is not wind enough to fill the canvass, there is sufficient to keep the air cool, and thus, even during the day, the weather is very pleasant; but the nights are quite heavenly, and so bright, that at ten o’clock yesterday evening little Jem Parsons (the cabin boy), and his friend the black terrier, came on deck, and sat themselves down on a gun-carriage, to read by the light of the moon. I looked at the boy’s book, (the terrier, I suppose, read over the other’s shoulder,) and found that it was “The Sorrows of Werter.” I asked who had lent him such a book, and whether it amused him? He said that it had been made a present to him, and so he had read it almost through, for he had got to Werter’s dying; though, to be sure, he did not understand it all, nor like very much what he understood; for he thought the man a great fool for killing himself for love. I told him I thought every man a great fool who killed himself for love or for any thing else: but had he no books but “The Sorrows of Werter?”—Oh dear, yes, he said, he had a great many more; he had got “The Adventures of a Louse,” which was a very curious book, indeed; and he had got besides “The Recess,” and “Valentine and Orson,” and “Ros-lin Castle,” and a book of Prayers, just like the Bible; but he could not but say that he liked “The Adventures of a Louse” the best of any of them.