n. November gales and December storms wreaked all their fury upon
the ship, retarding its progress so long that January arrived before
she had reached Chesapeake Bay. Floating ice filled the bay as far as
the eye could reach, and a January storm drove the ship among the
masses with such force, that she was in danger of being broken to
pieces. It was on one of those days of peril and consternation, that
young Astor appeared on deck in his best clothes, and on being asked
the reason of this strange proceeding, said that if he escaped with
life he should save his best clothes, and if he lost it his clothes
would be of no further use to him. Tradition further reports that he,
a steerage passenger, ventured one day to come upon the quarter-deck,
when the captain roughly ordered him forward. Tradition adds that that
very captain, twenty years after, commanded a ship owned by the
steerage passenger. When the ship was within a day's sail of her port
the wind died away, the cold increased, and the next morning beheld
the vessel hard and fast in a sea of ice. For two whole months she
remained immovable. Provisions gave out. The passengers were only
relieved when the ice extended to the shore, and became strong enough
to afford communication with other ships and with the coasts of the
bay. Some of the passengers made their way to the shore, and travelled
by land to their homes; but this resource was not within the means of
our young adventurer, and he was obliged to stick to the ship.

Fortune is an obsequious jade, that favors the strong and turns her
back upon the weak. This exasperating delay of two months was the
means of putting young Astor upon the shortest and easiest road to
fortune that the continent of America then afforded to a poor man.
Among his fellow-passengers there was one German, with whom he made
acquaintance on the voyage, and with whom he continually associated
during the detention of the winter. They told each other their past
history, their present plans, their future hopes. The stranger
informed young Astor that he too had emigrated to America, a few years
before, without friends or money; that he had soon managed to get into
the business of buying furs of the Indians, and of the boatmen coming
to New York from the river settlements; that at length he had embarked
all his capital in skins, and had taken them himself to England in a
returning transport, where he had sold them to great advantage, and
had inve