blime than the first
navigator's weathering of that terrible Cape?

Turned on her heel by a fierce West Wind, many an outward-bound ship
has been driven across the Southern Ocean to the Cape of Good
Hope--_that_ way to seek a passage to the Pacific. And that stormy
Cape, I doubt not, has sent many a fine craft to the bottom, and told
no tales. At those ends of the earth are no chronicles. What signify
the broken spars and shrouds that, day after day, are driven before the
prows of more fortunate vessels? or the tall masts, imbedded in
icebergs, that are found floating by? They but hint the old story--of
ships that have sailed from their ports, and never more have been heard
of.

Impracticable Cape! You may approach it from this direction or that--in
any way you please--from the East or from the West; with the wind
astern, or abeam, or on the quarter; and still Cape Horn is Cape Horn.
Cape Horn it is that takes the conceit out of fresh-water sailors, and
steeps in a still salter brine the saltest. Woe betide the tyro; the
fool-hardy, Heaven preserve!

Your Mediterranean captain, who with a cargo of oranges has hitherto
made merry runs across the Atlantic, without so much as furling a
t'-gallant-sail, oftentimes, off Cape Horn, receives a lesson which he
carries to the grave; though the grave--as is too often the
case--follows so hard on the lesson that no benefit comes from the
experience.

Other strangers who draw nigh to this Patagonia termination of our
Continent, with their souls full of its shipwrecks and
disasters--top-sails cautiously reefed, and everything guardedly
snug--these strangers at first unexpectedly encountering a tolerably
smooth sea, rashly conclude that the Cape, after all, is but a bugbear;
they have been imposed upon by fables, and founderings and sinkings
hereabouts are all cock-and-bull stories.

"Out reefs, my hearties; fore and aft set t'-gallant-sails! stand by to
give her the fore-top-mast stun'-sail!"

But, Captain Rash, those sails of yours were much safer in the
sail-maker's loft. For now, while the heedless craft is bounding over
the billows, a black cloud rises out of the sea; the sun drops down
from the sky; a horrible mist far and wide spreads over the water.

"Hands by the halyards! Let go! Clew up!"

Too late.

For ere the ropes' ends can be the east off from the pins, the tornado
is blowing down to the bottom of their throats. The masts are willows,
the sails ribbons, t