Saturday, June 5th, 1852.—Latitude 20° 43' N., longitude 47° 40' W. Yesterday knocked off two hundred and forty miles, averaging ten miles per hour; best run yet; only about 2200 miles distant to-day; made two hundred and twenty-four miles the last twenty-four hours.
Sixth of June.—Twelve o'clock just reported, and latitude 15° 14', and have run two hundred and twenty-two miles since meridian yesterday; making six hundred and eighty-six miles in three days, an average of two hundred and twenty-eight and two third miles per diem. Have passed the Windward Islands; are getting anxious now, and even if we do make good runs, yet this practice of killing time by half hours (the bell is struck every half hour), is becoming tedious, as we draw near home.
CHAPTER XXX.
Classic Ground—Hispaniola—Romance of the Western Waters—Extracts from Diary—On a Wind—Newsboats wanted—The Bermudas—Target practice.
We are now upon what might be called with poetical license, "classic ground." Over these seas the small caravels of Columbus sought the land, which had appeared to him in dreams, which we can now hardly look upon as less than inspired. To-day, the eighth of June, we are in the latitude of the south side of Cuba, along the shores of which he coasted, mistaking them for Cipango, beyond which he was to reach the magnificent country of Kathay, as described in the glowing pages of Marco Polo, and Mandeville.
We have passed the parallel of the Isle of St. Domingo, his beloved and heart-breaking Hispaniola. How blackened now its history, and how inapposite its name! Obliquely we run past the Lucayan Isles, looking out almost as anxiously as he did for the "promised land." But how opposite our situations! We, with all the certain aids of science and experience, steer for a well-known country; whilst he, thinking to make the far distant land from which we now return, his own mind his chart, his inspiration his guide, pointed his prow to uncertain ports in unknown seas.
Talk of the Mediterranean, its Islands and its romance, why there is more of the wonderful and romantic connected with the first voyages to the western Archipelago, and the continent of America, than is comprised in the history of the travel-stained Levant.
Would you have the story of the Argonauts, enlarged and improved, follow the track of any of those Portuguese, Spanish, or even English adventurers in search of gold, to these lands, and amongst these keys, and see how the expedition for the "golden fleece" dwindles into insignificance. But what does my poor pen with what our own wizard of the west, Washington Irving, has made immortal? Turn to the pages of his Columbus, but not before you have laid aside these.