s of his station were but trifling; for, although St. Blas was
a royal naval depot, the commanders of his majesty's ships almost
invariably preferred Callao, on account of its vicinity to the viceregal
court at Lima. Any other person would have pined to death in such a
remote and solitary corner of the earth, without society and without
employment; but Don Gaspar was one of those peculiarly constituted
individuals, who, having neither the faculty to communicate or receive
new ideas, are as happy and contented in one place as another. He had
come down to the water side at full gallop, and at the imminent risk of
his neck, in consequence of a report, that a large, armed English ship,
that was known to be on the coast trading, was approaching the Bay of
St. Blas.

The nautical commander, Don Diego Pinto, was a man of upwards of sixty
years of age, who had grown grey in the navy of Spain, without seeing
any service of consequence. He had followed one of the viceroys, to whom
he was recommended, to Peru, and the viceroy thought he had sufficiently
done his duty to his _protege_ by appointing him to the command of a
guarda-costa of eighteen guns, stationed at St. Blas, and including in
her cruising ground St. Josef, Mazattan, and the entrance to the Gulf of
California. His prey was good, and his duty was light; but all his hopes
of promotion were cut off by being stationed at what was generally
considered the "ultima Thule," the very extremity of the navigable
world.

The Yankees, to be sure, scorned any such fanciful restrictions, and had
long since penetrated to Nootka Sound and Behring's Straits, "the
hunters of the mighty whale;" but then the Yankees were a very singular
and peculiar race, and nobody in their senses cared to imitate them in
their wild, and sometimes lawless, rambles over the face of the
ocean--lawless, I wish to be understood, no farther than in sometimes
forgetting to inquire, in a strange port, whether there was any
custom-house there or not, and in most ports conceiving it to be the
duty of the collectors of the customs to come on board and secure the
duties, and if said collectors did not bear a hand and attend to their
business, why then Jonathan, who is always in a hurry, was apt to land
his cargo without the knowledge and without the leave of the
custom-house officers.

Don Diego's hatred to heretics and foreigners, unlike that of the
illustrious governor, was cordial and sincere, and by no mean