nd and appreciate the
pleasure mixed with pain that fills and agitates the heart when thou
hast unexpectedly obtained a voyage to thy liking. It is then that ideas
come thick and fast into the mind, treading upon each other's heels,
and climbing over one another's shoulders; the parting with much-loved
friends; the anticipated delights of the voyage, seen through that
bewitching, multiplying, magnifying glass, the imagination; the pride
and delight that fills a seaman's breast as his eyes run over the
beautiful proportions and lofty spars of his future home; all these
feelings are worth, while they last, an imperial crown. But soon comes
the reality, like Beatrice's "Repentance with his bad legs:" bad
provisions, bad water, and not half enough of either; ignorant and
tyrannical officers; a leaky, bad-steering, dull-sailing ship; the
vexatious and harrassing duty of a merchantman, where the men are
deprived of sufficient sleep, for fear that they should "earn their
wages in idleness," and of a sufficient supply of wholesome food, lest
they should "grow fat and lazy." Such is the theory and practice of most
New-England merchants: it was different forty years since, and the
outfit of the good ship Albatross had an eye to the comforts of the crew
as well as the profits of the owners; for merchants then thought that
the two were inseparable--the march of intellect has proved the reverse.

Although, as I have already taken occasion to observe, Fortune is
peculiarly hostile to lovers, yet she is sometimes "a good wench," and
so she proved herself, at least for a time. The passage of the Albatross
from the cradle of liberty and aristocracy to Valparaiso was unusually
short, considering that vessels outward bound at that period made a
regular practice of stopping at Rio Janeiro, whether in want of supplies
or not. She was singularly fortunate, likewise, in crossing the "horse
latitudes," not being becalmed there much over a week, a period hardly
long enough to call into proper exercise the Christian virtues of
patience and resignation.

Her passage into the Pacific was shortened by another fortunate
circumstance: Captain Williams was an adventurous as well as a skillful
seaman, and having a steady breeze from the north-east, he ran boldly
through the Straits of Le Maire, and thus shortened his passage perhaps
by a month; for ships have been known to be four months off Cape Horn
beating to the westward, and after all obliged to