The lives of the Sargassons are quite lethargic, but they are clamorous for rest.
It would be impossible to point out all the inconsistencies in the religious beliefs of this people. Take, for instance, their vague conception of heaven. Believing in extinction, as they universally did, they could have had no logical use for any heaven; yet, they hoped to attain that place of felicity, after death, and thought it to be an absolutely level country, covered to an even depth of three feet with warm, refreshing water, in which all the dwellers could wallow and walk eternally. But how the departed spirits were to reach this abode of bliss, or renew their spiritual existence after their primary extinction, I never found a Sargasson capable of explaining.
If the Sargassons were mentally befogged regarding their theories of a future state and of eternal rewards and punishments, they had a great many thoroughly practical observances respecting this life. Their principal article of diet was seaweed, which they served in the form of a glutinous pudding, like farina. Fish, which were very plentiful, furnished their only solid food. If Victor Hugo’s theory be true that fish creates and sustains brain tissue, the Sargassons ought to have been the most intellectual people in the world. They devoured fish in great quantities. It had always seemed a severe penance to me to be compelled to satisfy my hunger, on one day in the week, with fish, and when I found it provided as a steady article of food, my appetite soon rebelled. The seaweed stew was quite palatable, being naturally salted to the taste, but I never could become accustomed to the sundried fish.
The seaweed, collected in large quantities, was placed upon structures of lattice work resembling grape arbors, and was thoroughly dried. It was then picked over and the edible weeds selected.
As a people, the Sargassons did not smoke, but there were some experts among them who could roll a seaweed cigarette. I never attempted to smoke more than one of them, though I found it quite as good as the Virginia cheroot served in the Italian restaurants of New York.
The Sargassons were a temperate people, although they produced intoxication by drinking rain water, in which spars and old anchors had been soaked.
All crimes had their punishments. The abuse of a wife of a Kantoon by her husband was practically unknown; but when thoroughly authenticated upon the evidence of a third party, this crime was punished by the execution of the wife—the theory being that the culprit was more rebuked by taking from him the partner of his life, and compelling him to exist alone, than in any other way. As he coveted death, the infliction of that penalty upon the Kantoon would have been no punishment whatever. Like the unfortunate widows of India before the suttee was abolished, all wives so “extinguished” made no protest whatever, but in every instance recounted to me, went to their deaths joyfully, because of the unhappiness and remorse they believed their absence would bring to the widowers.
This real touch of femininity interested me very much.
The method of inflicting the sentence of death for crime was very curious. The hands and feet of the condemned were drawn together backward, so that the body took the form of a capital D. The man about to die was then affectionately kissed upon the forehead by all his comrades, and while the rest of the ship’s company chanted a dirge, the two men most beloved by him tossed the condemned into the sea.
To fall overboard generally meant death, because rescue by any other ship was forbidden, and no derelict was allowed to take such an unfortunate on board. If the wretched man could not regain his own ship he submitted quietly to the inevitable end.