e sheets eased
off for home. Speaking of ships, while at Rio an American vessel of war
arrived, and our sympathies were universally enlisted on learning that
she had been two long months trying to reach Valparaiso, but when off
the Horn, or in fact after having passed it, she experienced tremendous
hurricanes and giant waves, which blew the sails to ribbons, tore away
the boats, shattered the stern frame, and left her altogether in a most
distressing and heart-rending condition, consequently she put back. It
was worthy of remark, however, that she came buoyantly into the harbor,
tricked out in a bran new suit of clothes, and when a number of officers
went on board to survey her pitiable plight, they could find neither
leak nor strain, and very sensibly concluded she was one of the
staunchest and best corvettes in the navy, as indeed she was. John Bull
took back his mails and declared he would never take advantage again of
a crack Yankee sloop-of-war to forward important dispatches by.

Our pleasures were now limited, no one raised his nose above the
taffrail if not compelled; our chief resource was reading, and after
absorbing heaps of ephemeral trash drifting about the decks, we sought
the library and poured over ponderous tomes of physics, history or
travels. Books find their true value a shipboard--cut off from all
amusement of the land, we derive the full benefit by reading, for more
than reading's sake, or for the purpose of killing time in silly
abstraction, and many a stupid author is thoroughly digested, and many
labored narrations of voyages are carefully studied, whose narrators
have "compiled very dull books from very interesting materials," and
they should be grateful to governments for purchasing, and thankful for
indifferent persons to peruse them.

On the advent of Saturday nights, when the wind was blowing cold and
dreary, we sought the lowest depths of the frigate. _Facilis decensus
averni_, in other words, "'tis easy to dive into the cock-pit"--there in
a cozy state-room, we made a jovial little party, conducted on strictly
private principles, for the purpose of seeking medical advice. We
consulted a pot-bellied gentleman, with a small copper kettle on his
head, illumined by a spirit lamp, whilom, termed Doctor Faustus--unlike
the Sangrado practitioners, the Doctor constantly poured out instead of
in. One humorsome fellow, the President of our club, who was rather
stout on his pins, and _caree par la