r obvious reasons, untenable during the outward
passage, these ten individuals, when below deck, were stowed away in the
cabin and steerage, amid boxes, bales, chests, barrels, and water casks,
in a manner somewhat miscellaneous, and not the most commodious or
comfortable. Indeed, for several days after we left port, the usual and
almost only access to the cabin was by the skylight; and those who
made the cabin their home, were obliged to crawl on all fours over the
heterogeneous mass of materials with which it was crowded, in order to
reach their berths!

The owners of the brig must have calculated largely on favorable weather
during the passage; for had we experienced a gale on the coast, or
fallen in with the tail-end of a hurricane in the tropics, the whole
deck-load would have been swept away, and the lives of the ship's
company placed in imminent peril. The weather, however, proved
remarkably mild, and the many inconveniences to which the crew were
subjected were borne with exemplary patience, and sometimes even
regarded as a capital joke.

We passed the Whale's Back at the mouth of the Piscataqua, and the Isles
of Shoals loomed up through the hazy atmosphere; and although the wind
was light, and the sea apparently smooth, the brig began to have a
motion an awkward, uneasy motion for which I could not account, and
which, to my great annoyance, continued to increase as we left the land.
I staggered as I crossed the quarter-deck, and soon after we cleared
the harbor, came near pitching overboard from the platform covering the
sheep-pens. My head was strangely confused, and a dizziness seized me,
which I in vain struggled to shake off. My spirits, so gay and buoyant
as we sailed down the harbor, sunk to zero.

At length I could not resist the conviction that I was assailed with
symptoms of seasickness, a malady which I had always held in contempt,
believing it to exist more in imagination than in fact, and which I was
determined to resist, as unsailor-like and unmanly. Other symptoms of
a less equivocal description, soon placed the character of my illness
beyond a doubt. My woe-begone looks must have betrayed my feelings, for
one of the men told me, with a quizzical leer, that old Neptune always
exacted toll in advance from a green hand for his passage over the
waters.

Mr. Thompson, who seemed to pity my miserable condition, gravely
assured me that exercise was a capital thing as a preventive or cure for
seasic