A delightful prospect met our eyes, on coming on deck the morning after making the Hole in the Wall. The sea was crowded with vessels, bearing upon its silvery bosom a floating city. By some fortuitous circumstance, a fleet of vessels, bearing the flags of various nations, had arrived in the Bahama channel at the same time, and now, were amicably sailing in company, borne by the same waves—wafted by the same breeze, and standing toward the same point. Our New-York friend, for whom, on casting our eyes over the lively scene we first searched, we discovered nearly two leagues from us to the windward, stretching boldly across the most dangerous part of the Bahama Banks, instead of taking, with the rest of the fleet, the farther but less hazardous course down the "Channel"—if a few inches more of water than the Banks are elsewhere covered with, may with propriety be thus denominated.
A little to the south of us, rocking upon the scarcely rising billows, was a rough clumsy looking craft, with one low, black mast, and amputated bowsprit, about four feet in length, sustaining a jib of no particular hue or dimensions. Hoisted upon the mast, was extended a dark red painted mainsail, blackened by the smoke, which, issuing from a black wooden chimney amidships, curled gracefully upward and floated away on the breeze in thin blue clouds. A little triangular bit of red bunting fluttered at her mast head; and, towed by a long line at her stern, a little green whale-boat skipped and danced merrily over the waves. Standing, or rather reclining at the helm—for men learn strangely indolent postures in the warm south—with a segar between his lips, and his eye fixed earnestly upon the J. L., was a black-whiskered fellow, whose head was enveloped in a tri-coloured, conical cap, terminated by a tassel, which dangled over his left ear. A blue flannel shirt, and white flowing trowsers, with which his body and limbs were covered, were secured to his person by a red sash tied around the waist, instead of suspenders. Two others similarly dressed, and as bountifully bewhiskered, leaned listlessly over the side gazing at our ship, as she dashed proudly past their rude bark. A negro, whose charms would have been unquestionable in Congo, was stretched, apparently asleep, along the main-boom, which one moment swung with him over the water, and the next suspended him over his chimney, whose azure incense ascended from his own altar, to this ebony deity, in clouds of grateful odour.
"What craft do you call that?" inquired one of the passengers of the captain.
"What? It's a wrecker's lugger.—Watch him now!"
At the moment he spoke, the lugger dropped astern of us, came to a few points—hauled close on the wind, and then gathering headway, bounded off with the speed of the wind in the direction of the New-York packet ship, which the wrecker's quicker and more practised eye had detected displaying signals of distress. Turning our glasses in the direction of the ship, we could see that she had grounded on the bank, thereby affording very ample illustration of the truth of the proverb, "The more haste the less speed."
About the middle of the forenoon the wind died away, and left us becalmed within half a mile of a brig loaded with lumber. The remaining vessels of the fleet were fast dispersing over the sea—this Yankee "fruiterer" being the only one sailing within a league of us.
These lumber vessels, which are usually loaded with shingles, masts, spars, and boards, have been long the floating mines of Maine. But as her forests disappear, which are the veins from whence she draws the ore, her sons will have to plough the earth instead of the ocean. Then, and not till then, will Maine take a high rank as an agricultural state. The majority of men who sail in these lumber vessels are both farmers and sailors; who cultivate their farms at one season, fell its timber and sail away with it in the shape of boards and shingles to a West India mart at another. Jonathan is the only man who knows how to carry on two trades at one time, and carry them on successfully.
For their lumber, which they more frequently barter away than sell, they generally obtain a return cargo of molasses, which is converted by our "sober and moral" fellow-countrymen into liquid gunpowder, in the vats of those numerous distilleries, which, like guide-posts to the regions of death, line the sea skirts of New-England!
The smooth bottom, above which we were suspended, through the deceptive transparency of the water, appeared, though eighteen feet beneath us, within reach of the oar. But there were many objects floating by upon the surface, which afforded us more interest than all beneath it.
Among these was the little nautilus which, gaily dancing over the waves, like a Lilliputian mariner,