g spring, when,
under diplomatic pressure, the French expedition was withdrawn; but by
then I was again in Rio de Janeiro on my way to China.

The headquarters of this temporary squadron was at Pensacola; but
until her unlucky visit to the Rio Grande my ship, the _Muscoota_, one
of the iron double-ender paddle steamers which the war had evolved
among other experiments, lay for some months at Key West, then, as
always from its position, a naval station of importance. I suppose
most people know that this word "Key," meaningless in its application
to the low islands which it designates, is the anglicized form of the
Spanish "Cayo." Among the valued acquaintances of my life I here met a
clergyman, whose death at the age of eighty I see as these words pass
from my pen. As chaplain to the garrison, he had won the esteem and
praise of many, including General Sherman, for his devotion during an
epidemic of yellow-fever, and he was now rector of the only Episcopal
parish. He told me an anecdote of one of his flock. Key West, from its
situation, had many of the characteristics of an outpost, a frontier
town, a mingling of peoples, with consequent rough habits, hard
drinking, and general dissipation. The man in question, a good fellow
in his way, professed to be a very strong churchman, and constantly so
avowed himself; but the bottle was too much for him. The rector
remonstrated. "----, how can you go round boasting yourself a
churchman when your life is so scandalous? You are doing the Church
harm, not good, by such talk." "Yes, Mr. Herrick," he replied, "I know
it's too bad; it is a shame; but, you see, all the same, I _am_ a good
churchman. I fight for the Church. If I hear a man say anything
against her, I knock him down." It was at Mr. Herrick's table I heard
criticised the local inadequacy of the prayer-book petition for rain.
"What we want," said the speaker, "is not 'moderate rain and showers,
that we may receive the fruits of the earth,' but a hard down-pour to
fill our tanks." Key West and its neighbors then depended chiefly, if
not solely, upon this resource for drinking-water.

IX

A ROUNDABOUT ROAD TO CHINA

1867

With the termination of the War of Secession, which had concentrated
the entire effort of the navy upon our own coasts and inland waters,
the policy of the government reverted, irreflectively perhaps, to the
identical system of distribution in squadrons that had existed before.
The prolonged