"7.—Rather rough and cold; I have spent all day in the cabin. It makes me homesick to have such weather.
"14.—I rose at five o'clock and went on deck, and before long saw land. It was Terra del Fuego; it was a beautiful sight. Here lay a pretty island, there a towering precipice, and over yonder a mountain covered with snow. We made the fatal Cape Horn at two o'clock, and passed it at four o'clock. Now we are in the Atlantic Ocean.
"WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY.—Rough weather: a sixteen-knot breeze. To-day we got our one thousandth egg, and the hens are doing well. At twelve—eight bells—we saw a sail on our weather-bow: she was going the same way as we were. At two, we overtook and spoke her. She was the whaler Scotland from New Zealand, bound for New Bedford, with thirty-five hundred barrels of oil. We soon passed her. I wish her good luck."
I will no longer stretch the small, sad boy upon the rack of his dull journal. He had a glimpse at Juan Fernandez, but the island of his dreams was so far off that he had to climb to the maintop in order to get a sight of its shadowy outline. When it had faded away like the clouds, the lonely little fellow cried himself to sleep for love of his Robinson Crusoe.
One night the moon—a large, mellow tropical one,—rose from a bank of cloud so like a mountain's chain that the small one clapped his hands in glee and cried: "Land ho!" But, alas! it was only cloud-land; and his eyes, that were starving for a sight of God's green earth, were again bedewed. Indeed he was bound for a distant shore, a voyage of ninety-one days; and during all that voyage he was in sight of land for five days only. It may be said that the port he was bound for, and where he was destined to pass two years at school, four thousand miles from his own people, may be called "The Vale of Tears."
Off the Brazilian coast a head-wind forced the ship to tack repeatedly; she was sometimes so near the land that people could be seen moving, like black dots, along the shore. Native fishermen, mounted upon the high seats of their catamarans—the frailest rafts,—drifted within hailing distance; and over night the brave ship was within almost speaking distance of Pernambuco. The lights of the city were like a bed of glowworms,—but the small, sad boy was blown off into the sea again, for his hour had not yet come.
Here is the last entry I shall weary you with, for I would not abuse your patience:
"APRIL 5, 1857.—I was awoke this morning by the noise the pilot made in getting on board. At ten o'clock the steam-tug Hercules took us in tow. We had beautiful views of the shore [God knows how beautiful they were in his eyes!], and at three o'clock we were at the Astor House, with Captain and Mrs. Cresey, Mr. Connor, and the Stoddard boys—all of the Flying Cloud,—where we retired to soft beds to spend the night."
There is a plaintive touch in that reference to soft beds after three months in the straight and narrow bunk of a ship. And there is more pathos in all those childish pages than you wot of; for, alas and alas! I am the sole survivor,—I was that small, sad boy; and I alone am left to tell the tale.