ly
Staten Land. Upon one occasion, the ship in which I then happened to be
sailing drew near this place from the northward, with a fair, free
wind, blowing steadily, through a bright translucent clay, whose air
was almost musical with the clear, glittering cold. On our starboard
beam, like a pile of glaciers in Switzerland, lay this Staten Land,
gleaming in snow-white barrenness and solitude. Unnumbered white
albatross were skimming the sea near by, and clouds of smaller white
wings fell through the air like snow-flakes. High, towering in their
own turbaned snows, the far-inland pinnacles loomed up, like the border
of some other world. Flashing walls and crystal battlements, like the
diamond watch-towers along heaven's furthest frontier.

After leaving the latitude of the Cape, we had several storms of snow;
one night a considerable quantity laid upon the decks, and some of the
sailors enjoyed the juvenile diversion of snow-balling. Woe unto the
"middy" who that night went forward of the booms. Such a target for
snow-balls! The throwers could never be known. By some curious sleight
in hurling the missiles, they seemed to be thrown on board by some
hoydenish sea-nymphs outside the frigate.

At daybreak Midshipman Pert went below to the surgeon with an alarming
wound, gallantly received in discharging his perilous duty on the
forecastle. The officer of the deck had sent him on an errand, to tell
the boatswain that he was wanted in the captain's cabin. While in the
very act of performing the exploit of delivering the message, Mr. Pert
was struck on the nose with a snow-ball of wondrous compactness. Upon
being informed of the disaster, the rogues expressed the liveliest
sympathy. Pert was no favourite.

After one of these storms, it was a curious sight to see the men
relieving the uppermost deck of its load of snow. It became the duty of
the captain of each gun to keep his own station clean; accordingly,
with an old broom, or "squilgee," he proceeded to business, often
quarrelling with his next-door neighbours about their scraping their
snow on his premises. It was like Broadway in winter, the morning after
a storm, when rival shop-boys are at work cleaning the sidewalk.

Now and then, by way of variety, we had a fall of hailstones, so big
that sometimes we found ourselves dodging them.

The Commodore had a Polynesian servant on board, whose services he had
engaged at the Society Islands. Unlike his countrymen, Wooloo