A Ship without Sailors.
Among the vessels lying in the harbour of San Francisco is one athwart whose stern is lettered the name El Condor.
She is a ship of small dimensions—some five or six hundred tons—devoted to peaceful commerce, as can be told by certain peculiarities of rig and structure, understood by the initiated in nautical affairs.
The name will suggest a South American nationality—Ecuadorian, Peruvian, Bolivian, or Chilian—since the bird after which she has been baptised is found in all these States. Columbia and the Argentine Confederation can also claim it.
But there is no need to guess at the particular country to which the craft in question belongs. The flag suspended over her taffrail declares it, by a symbolism quite intelligible to those who take an interest in national insignia.
It is a tricolour—the orthodox red, white, and blue—not, as with the French, disposed vertically, but in two horizontal bands; the lower one crimson red, the upper half-white, half-blue—the last contiguous to the staff, with a single five-pointed star set centrally in its field. This disposition of colours proclaims the ship that carries them to be Chilian.
She is not the only Chilian craft in the harbour of San Francisco. Several others are there showing the same colours; brigs, barques, schooners, and ships. For the spirited little South American Republic is as prosperous as enterprising, and its flag waves far and wide over the Pacific. With its population of skilled miners, it had been among the first of foreign states in sending a large representative force to “cradle” the gold placers of California, and not only are its ships lying in the bay, but its guasos and gambusinos in goodly number tread the streets of the town; while many of the dark-eyed damsels, who from piazzas and balconies salute the passer-by with seductive smiles, are those charming little Chileñas that make havoc with the heart of almost every Jack-tar who visits Valparaiso.
On the ship El Condor we meet not much that can be strictly called Chilian; little besides the vessel herself and the captain commanding her. Not commanding her sailors: since there are none upon her hailing from Chili or elsewhere. Those who brought the Condor into San Francisco Bay have abandoned her—gone off to the gold-diggings! Arriving in the heat of the placer-fever, they preferred seeking fortune with pick, shovel, and pan, to handling tarry ropes at ten dollars a month. Almost on the instant of the ship’s dropping anchor they deserted to a man, leaving her skipper to himself, or with only his cook for a companion.
Neither is the latter Chilian, but African—a native of Zanzibar. No more the two great monkeys, observed gambolling about the deck; for the climate of Chili, lying outside the equatorial belt, is too cold for indigenous quadrumana.
Not much appearing upon the Condor would proclaim her a South American ship; and nothing in her cargo, for a cargo she carries. She has just arrived from a trading voyage to the South Sea Isles, extending to the Indian Archipelago, whence her lading—a varied assortment, consisting of tortoise-shell, spices, mother-of-pearl, Manilla cigars, and such other commodities as may be collected among the Oriental islands. Hence also the myas monkeys—better known as orang-outangs—seen playing about her deck. These she has brought from Borneo.