constitutions, and wasted frames, enfeebled by
disease, to linger out a miserable existence on the native land they
still loved so well.

A fortnight we sailed moderately and pleasantly in a race with the sun
towards the equator. The pole star slowly but surely declined in the
north; faces began to assume a more cheerful aspect; we became
reconciled to our fate; to banish those hateful things called
reminiscences, which, even though pleasant, only make us regret them the
more, when gone forever. Thus we entered the tropic, and then lay
lunging and plunging in the doldrums--clouds dead and stupid, with the
sun making all manner of gay transparencies, at the rising, and most
particularly at the setting thereof. Then came another week of _una
furiosa calma_--a furious calm, as the Spaniards have it--bobbing about
in undulating billows, and the tough canvass beating and chafing in
futile anger. It was thus we learned, those of us who had not made the
discovery before, what a really animal existence one leads on shipboard;
a sort of dozing nonentity, only agreeable to those who have no
imaginative organizations desirous of more extended sphere of action.

It does passibly well to eat and sleep away life--that is, presuming
the dinners be hot and eatable, and nights cool and sleepable--in smooth
seas, and under mild suns; but when the winds are piping loud and cold,
the vessel diving and leaping at every possible angle of the compass,
with the stomachs of the mariners occasionally pitched into their heads,
as if they were dromedaries, with several internal receptacles apiece,
devised purposely to withstand the thumps and concussions of salt water;
when the ship is performing these sub-marine and aerial evolutions I
take it, as a reasonable being, there can be found a stray nook or two,
on hard ground, far more comfortable and habitable. And by way of
parenthesis, I beg leave to recommend to any and all unfortunate persons
given to aquatic recreation, and troubled with the disease whilom called
sea-sickness, to divest the mind and body of care and clothing, tumble
into a swinging cot, and on the verge of starvation sip sparingly of
weak brandy and water, nibble a biscuit, and a well-roasted potato. I
made this important discovery after being a sufferer ten years, and
pledge a reputation upon the strength of that martyrdom, of its
infallible virtues.

Indeed, there are but two kinds of sailing at all bearable. I allude, of
c