Part 14

About six P.M. the Shakspeare took a long slide, just clearing the bowsprit of the Coromandel. Breeze getting up from S.S.E. a little sea coming in. Our pilot, it seems, does not know when the tide is at its highest, but thinking we might slide over suddenly in the night, this efficient person now quitted us, taking to our larger neighbour, whose chance, I am sorry to say, does not seem great of a hasty removal. She lies nearly on her beam-ends, with very little motion, thirteen feet water under her bowsprit end.

After amusing myself all day taking different bearings, and calculating each inch we made, got disgusted at last, and about midnight crept into bed, praying Heaven henceforward to be kept clear of all bars, from this of the Balize to the bar of the Old Bailey; although I do think, if I had a choice, I should prefer being arraigned for highway-robbery, or any other gentlemanlike felony, at the latter, to the being kept for a month weltering in mud upon the former.

_Wednesday, 25th._--Prospect a little brighter, a swell setting in from the eastward; the ship evidently working over, as we now have sixteen feet water within half our length ahead: day mild and clear, with a south-easterly breeze: all the passengers busy noting our snail-like progress: the poor Coromandel, which is fixed as a rock, affords us an excellent _land_-mark; we have slipped by her inch by inch. At three o'clock P.M. the ship's bow is all alive, the heel alone hangs on the ridge: a French brig is just taking the bar, and rapidly nears us. At four P.M., just as the Frenchman came abreast of us, and her crew raised a cheer, the Shakspeare launched forward, as though just sent from the stocks; and, as all hands of us were on deck, with the poop and forecastle both well manned, we gave forth an involuntary hurrah, in which the crew of the Coromandel, who were all forward watching the result, heartily joined: the cheer of the dashing little Frenchman was in this way fairly drowned.

Our captain seems a smart hand; he had his sails trimmed, and the Shakspeare heading seaward, in less than no time: nor was it long before we reached the boundary line of the great river. At some six or seven miles from the bar a well-defined line is observable, stretching away north and south, with a regular curve outward. On all sides within this arch the water is thick and muddy, and immediately without this is the clear deep blue of the gulf; yet the influence of the current of the Mississippi is sensibly felt full seventy miles to the southward, its strength being found to set in that direction.

Our breeze freshened gradually all the evening, until by midnight it blew a rattler; but, thank Heaven, we are clear of the mud; no more lead-lines bandying about the decks.

_Friday, 27th._--How time flies! and yet how same has been my existence since this day week,--five days of expectation, with but two of action; yet the fifty-secondth part of the year is away scarce marked! One is here actually compelled to turn back to the date of one's last _mem._ and look what day one has fallen on, so hard is it to keep note of time without occupation, or the remembrancers that surround us in our daily affairs on shore. I do not wonder at Crusoe notching his stick; the wonder is, that he should have been able to decide whether or no to-day was yesterday.

All is calm and fixed above, with a long easterly swell rolling under our foot, which does not seem likely to subside, although, as our captain informs me, unusual at this time of year. Large logs of blackened timber drift about, reminding us of the great river within whose influence we yet unhappily remain, although but twenty hours of fair wind would lead us round the Tortugas, within the influence of the gulf-stream. Employed all my morning shooting at bottles as empty as myself; this, with eating, drinking, and _ecarté_, forms the amusement and occupation of the day. I have heard of people who could read and write on ship-board; but, for myself, protest I never could do either with the least possible satisfaction.

Last night the Connecticut steamer passed close by us, bound for Havannah; I could not help wishing she had been compelled to give Billy Shakspeare a pull.

Whilst at whist in the night, a passenger was reported dead of cholera. "Well," said our chief, "if he's dead, we must bury him, that's all." It was an old man, whose only daughter, with her husband and child, were on board; and the report is, that he has been grossly neglected by this pair, having been very well when received.

_Saturday, 28th._--Seven A.M.; went upon deck, and was delighted to find stun-sails on both sides, a clear blue sky above, reflected on a sea of the same colour, only crested with wreaths of snowy whiteness: wind about west by north. What an instantaneous elasticity does the spirit gather up from a change like this! I had quitted my room despondingly, having slept sound and hearing no indications of a breeze; the dull heavy creak of the bulk-heads alone spoke of motion; when, on gaining the poop-deck, a fair, free breeze, and an atmosphere filled with life and vigour, awaited to be hailed.

Our dead passenger was uppermost in my mind, and I made inquiry of the officer of the watch respecting the hour appointed for committing the corpse to the sea, until that time when Judgment might claim its own from the deep caves of ocean. I found, however, that the old man was in no way prepared to avail himself of this day's sunshine for his dark journey, being, on the contrary, alive if not merry.

It appears that, whilst busied about the last offices offered by the living to the dead, signs of life had been discovered by his attendants, and the expiring flame gently reinvigorated by judicious friction and brandy and water, the old man's ancient bane, and now his antidote. I hastened to see this dead-alive, and found him perfectly conscious of his restoration to "this breathing world;" but I imagine the respite can only be for a very limited period. Captain Collins had the jolly-boat fitted up for him on the main-deck, and, when placed in it on a clean comfortable bed, his pulse was barely perceptible; his eye was glazed and dim, and his frame emaciated to a degree that was painful to contemplate. The daughter is a fair-haired devil of two-and-twenty, tall and hearty, but exhibits a callous want of feeling and a disregard of opinion, seldom met with in the most ruffianly of our sex, and truly shocking in a woman.

The father, I learn, is from the state of New Jersey, where he possesses a good farm, and flocks and herds, to which this Goneril will succeed on his demise; hence it is that she looks upon his nurses with no love or gratitude. The poor old man, in hopes of augmenting her store, had quitted his pleasant possessions in Jersey, to seek wealth amongst the swamps of the Mississippi. How long, I wonder, will the fluttering soul, evidently plumed and eager for its flight, be held within the frail, worn-out prison-house? Its flight!--but whither and to what? "Ay, there's the rub!" the riddle, which this poor wretch will probably solve before the wisest living philosopher could build a single conjecture towards it.

Last night it appears the calf got loose in the stall, and joyfully helped itself to the food supplied by nature to the mother for its sustenance; in consequence, we, for this morning, are minus milk for breakfast. With a decision prompt and unanimous, this act was voted a robbery, the calf a felon, and the award death without delay. No counsel was called for the hungry youngster, nor a voice heard in Nature's behalf; the absence of the customary supply of milk was considered evidence conclusive and damnatory; the hearts of judge and jurors were superseded by their appetites, and doubtless the criminal calf must die the death.

All day our fine wind follows us; the sun is hot; we have an awning spread over the whole of the noble poop-deck, and within its shade we lounge or lie about in the most perfect luxury of idleness, whilst the Shakspeare majestically moves forward on her course, with just motion enough to be pleasant.

_Sunday, 29th._--This morning we found our table abundantly supplied with milk; which, together with a burnt-offering of the inconsiderate calf's liver, bore undoubted evidence of the steward's prompt execution of the court's decree. Thinking it a pity such an example of strict justice should be lost to the world, I have, as far as this record goes, done my utmost to preserve it. Wind still abaft the beam, blowing a steady, constant sort of blow; sun cheerful, and sea all alive. About meridian a shore-bird, rather like a woodcock, but considerably larger, came fluttering round the ship, evidently wearied by long flight, yet fearing to confide in our hospitality; and not without reason, faith! for one of our passengers gave me notice of the stranger, and gravely requested me to shoot it. I said nothing; but the ship and cargo could not have bribed me to raise a barrel against that timid, storm-worn, home-sick bird: no, if he would trust in me, he should have rest and food, and so fly back to his lone mistress rejoicing.

Our old man breathes still, but shows little disposition to make an effectual rally against the foe: for the rest, crew and passengers, all are well. A number of Irish lads occupy the between-decks: they have a fiddle amongst them, and "welt the flure" on the forecastle, every night, with a perseverance that is most amusing.

_Thursday, April 2nd._--Since the 28th ult., light west and south-westerly winds, with warm balmy days. This morning we lost one of our crew overboard, an exceedingly pretty parroquet I had purchased at New Orleans: it was an amusing, active little creature, and on several occasions had crept through the bars of its cage, and slily gone up the rigging, whence it had, after a time, descended of itself, or had been brought down by one of the boys: but frequent peril incurred with impunity breeds presumption, and towering ambition knows no safe halting-place; so my poor, pretty Poll, on each new climb, gained a more giddy and more dangerous elevation, until on this day, attracted by her usual scream of exultation, I cast my eyes upwards in search of her, and quickly made her out, strutting to the weather-end of the royal yard-arm, the loftiest perch in the ship.

I augured ill of the attempt, and was watching her movements, when, either impelled by an innate love of liberty, or lured by some fragrant odour borne on the air from the distant woods of Florida, she made a bold flight in the direction of the land, and fell into the sea a little distance a-head of the ship.

Poll was a favourite, and Captain Collins a kind-hearted man: the Shakspeare was brought by the wind, and various efforts made to near the silly bird; but all in vain: we went rapidly past her, and left her to the fate her presumption had courted. The efforts the little creature made to approach the vessel were incessant, and almost painful to regard: from the instant she touched the waves, her head was kept to the ship, which she strove to regain by flapping along the surface with her maimed short-clipped pinions. I felt that I could have saved her; and only for shame, and the great trouble it would have necessarily caused, I should assuredly have slipped over the side after the miserable little fool.

Our fair wind sticks to us, and the gulf-stream is calculated to be from three to three miles and a half in our favour; so that we are making short work of it. All alive and well.

_Tuesday, 7th._--We last night got inside the Hook, but were blown off, not being able to get a pilot. We are now thrashing at it with a bitter head-wind. A great number of ships of all kinds are beating through the bay, as well as numbers coming out with it all their own way. The Shakspeare proves worthy the name, as she weathers and goes a-head of every craft beating with us. A very smart ship, called the "Washington Irvine," held our Billy a stout tug, but, after reading the name as she went about a-head of us for many turns, we at last crawled to windward, and Shakspeare took the lead, as even the "Washington Irvine" must admit was perfectly proper.

At the quarantine station we landed our sick passenger, and were permitted to proceed. By four P.M. I once more set my foot on the dock-side of New York, after an absence of five months, and felt as though I had again reached home.

Let me here remark, that during these five months I had travelled through the roughest part of these States in every sort of conveyance, and had been thrown amongst all classes of the community, yet never received one rude word or encountered an inconvenience, save those inseparable from the condition of the roads. Even the Southern mail, the discomforts of which I have painted exactly as I experienced them, I must in fairness admit is well managed, when the difficulties to be encountered at the season of my journey are justly taken into consideration. Their object is to get on; this, as long as possible, at any risk, they are bound to do. It will be seen that, when a coach cannot be dragged through, they nail a few boards on the axle, and proceed with this lighter and less ticklish vehicle: it is true the passengers suffer much; but only those exceedingly desirous to proceed travel at such times, and without such a resort the machinery must stand still.

Out of our party two stout men gave in at different stages; and another, when I quitted America, had not recovered from the effects of exposure to wet, loss of rest, and fatigue.

The journey ought not, in my mind, to be undertaken by any man who regards his ease, after the month of November or before the month of May. A new route is, however, already in use by coach and steam-boat across Florida: a railroad is also in contemplation by the same line, which, connected with the present ready means of gaining Charleston, will probably, in a season or so, make the communication with Mobile and New Orleans a trip of little inconvenience.

Still I consider that a near view of the border parts of Georgia and Alabama, together with a sail down the noble river of that name, watering, as it does, the richest lands in the world, and destined, as it evidently is, to sustain a vast population on its banks, ought not to be neglected by any man whose motives for travel have any higher aim than mere amusement. For myself, I would not have missed the contemplation of this truly elementary society, and the absolute novelty it presents, for thrice the inconveniences it was my fortune, during an uncommon series of bad weather, to encounter.

NEW YORK.

I passed the next two months between this city and Philadelphia, taking leave of the audience of the latter city on Saturday, May the 9th, attended by demonstrations of the kindest and most flattering regard. The next week I idled between Princeton and New York. The Artists' Exhibition was at this time open here, and it afforded me genuine pleasure to see many pictures that were good, and numbers of early attempts of a highly promising character.

I also visited an exhibition of pictures which had been proffered to Congress at the sum of forty thousand dollars, in order that this collection might form the foundation of a great national gallery; a worthy object, and of which these pictures would have formed a right-becoming commencement.

Here were specimens, and worthy ones, of many masters; amongst others a Murillo, indisputably genuine, and, although a little faded in colour, still worth a wilderness of most other productions. The subject was a painful one too, being the agony of Christ on the Mount of Olives.

Never, surely, was the utter prostration of flesh and soul so speakingly made out; bitter indeed must the cup have been so painfully contemplated by one so meek, so patient of suffering; Omniscience only, being so entreated, could yet have held it to the sufferer's pallid lips, or contemplated with a fixed purpose the sorrowing eyes imploringly cast upwards.

Before the kneeling Christ,--the worn and wasted man,--there floated an angel worthy of the dying Psalmist's imagining, so unearthly, so ethereal! What a full heart must the inspired painter have had as in his mind's eye he purely shadowed forth this most perfect conception of one of those who hold companionship with God! It was made up of all the rarest traits of beauty, yet its loveliness was not of the world: the veriest dullard looking on it would have paused in admiration; the most brutal have gazed into those pure eyes, untainted by one earthly feeling, one sinful thought, or impure desire. On my mind the effect was thrilling: I have pictured to myself angels as poets have described them, and have often before looked upon them such as they have been conceived by Angelo, Correggio, and other master-spirits amongst men, and have seen faces of theirs on which I could have looked unsatiated again and again, and forms I could have loved with all my heart; but never beheld an emanation of the Spirit of God, a thing only to be gazed on holily and worshipped humbly, until I met with this angel of Murillo's.

Were I Pope, the painter should be canonized as one visibly inspired from heaven, and on whose visions angels must have waited, since earth never could have supplied from its fairest a model for such expression as he has here given to the comforter of that heart-broken Christ. It is worth living virtuously, to die in the hope of such companionship hereafter, and for all eternity. After having been for two years deprived of the pleasure an enthusiast derives from the painter's art, the mere contemplation of such a picture elevates and refines one's spirit; the world and worldly feelings are forgot, and for a moment the soul breathes freely within its earthly prison.

Here were three pictures of Sir Joshua Reynolds; one a group of the Clive family, including the native Ayah holding a little girl on a chair. This Indian nurse is painted to the life, graceful, animated, and devoted; only for the difference of complexion, one might imagine the delicate girl she looks on with such tender pride her own, and not the offspring of the cold white woman whose eyes are fixed on you as she stands _vis-à-vis_ to her stiff lord, who is dressed in a rappee-coloured habit richly overlaid with gold.

This picture might very well be described as a fancy subject, and designated Nature and Art. Opposite this fine picture of our English master hung another group, by Rembrandt; making up in force and colour what it lacked in delicacy and refinement. The subject was the De Witt family; and each portrait wore that genuine stamp of truth that left no question of their resemblance to the Dutch originals.

There were some sea-pieces by Backhuysen, and one by Vanderveldt; several excellent landscapes; a couple of gallery pictures worthy a place in the Pitti, together with Danby's Opening of the Sixth Seal. All together, in fact, this was a collection of no mean pretensions, which would have been an exceedingly creditable foundation on which to have raised a national gallery. The sum which it was required Congress should appropriate to the purchase was forty thousand dollars; and considering how that assembly is constituted, how little most of its members know or care about pictures, or of their intrinsic value, and how utterly unimbued they are with any conception of the moral worth of art to a young nation, I conceive it very creditable to the body that the motion was negatived by only two votes.

How could a member from Illinois or Mississippi have justified such an item in the budget to his constituents? I can fancy a group of good Jackson men, after reading of an appropriation of forty thousand dollars for the purchase of twenty pictures, raising their admiring eyes to a portrait of the General swinging from the signpost, for the painting of which, with a horse's head into the bargain, the tavern-keeper, Major Jones, had paid no cent more than fifteen dollars; and then coming back on the corrupt motives which could induce a vote of a couple of thousand a-piece for pictures "that could not by any natural means be liker nature, or more handsomely done, nohow, by any foreigner that ever fisted a paint-brush."

The attempting Congress was, in truth, a mistake; but I cannot help thinking that, had a subscription been opened in either of the great Northern cities, or in New Orleans, for the purpose of founding a State collection, a much greater sum might have been readily raised; since there are in each of these cities numbers of wealthy individuals having the good taste to rightly appreciate the value of such an Institution, and public spirit enough to have effected the object, had it once received the impetus. As it is, I could not help regretting that the opportunity was lost, the pictures being advertised for sale without reserve, the auction to take place in a few days.

On the 19th we had a grand military ceremony and procession, to receive and escort to the Battery the remains of General Leavensworth, a brave and very popular officer, who died in consequence of the fatigue and privations incurred on the late prairie expedition amongst the tribes of the Missouri. His remains were brought hither by way of the Lakes on the route to the place of sepulture.

The volunteer corps were all turned out on this occasion, each remarkable for the neatness of its dress and completeness of appointment. The members of these corps also had a trim and dainty air well becoming men playing at soldiers,--a game, by the way, no full-grown biped who regards his personal dignity ought ever to play after arriving at the years of discretion: for youths it is a cheerful and becoming amusement enough; but for fat, full-blown gentlemen! Nothing can be conceived more whimsical than the uncomfortable air of ease it is necessary to assume on the occasion; particularly for such as are promoted to the ticklish degree of field-officers; each of whom is most unconscionably expected at one and the same instant to retain possession of a hard-mouthed horse, a pair or two of reins, a sword, a plumed _chapeau_, and his seat into the bargain, having only the ordinary allowance of hands to help himself withal. It is all very amusing for the bystanders to laugh at the cruel scrape their friends are in when so be-deviled in a crowded street on a hot day; but let those who conceive the matter so easy, only get appointed to the dangerous eminence, and try how they like it.