I Pyramid Lake, Oregon . Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1848, by NAFIS & CORNISH. in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States, for the South era District of New York Stereotyped by Vincent Dill, Jr., 17 Ann Street J. J. Reed, Printer, 16 Spruce -et PKEEACE. In sending out the following sheets, the Author has done whai a year ago was as far removed from the path of his intentions, as the theatre of the incidents related is from the fireside at which they were written. But who can estimate the force of circumstances in shaping his destiny 1 I wrote my Travels in the Great Western Prairies, &c., with little belief that they would excite any attention beyond the circle in which personal friendship would in some sense link the reader with the events narrated. I did not comprehend the extensive interest felt in journey- ings over the wild and barren realms of uncultivated Nature. I did not suppose that the dim outline which words could give of the snow* clad peak, the desert vale, and the trials and dangers which crowd about the pilgrim on the Western Deserts and Mountains, could be made sufficiently distinct to convey even a satisfactory shadow of their sublime, fearful nature. But the very unexpected favor with which that work has been received, has led me to conclude that such matters, related as far as they may be at all, with fidelity, are valued as useful knowledge. Indeed, we may learn much from the pulseless solitudes —from the desert untrodden by the foot of living thing — from the frozen world of mountains, whose chasms and cliffs never echoed to aught, but the thunder-tempests girding their frozen peaks — from old Nature, piled, rocky, bladeless, toneless— if we will allow its lessons of awe to reach the mind, and impress it with the fresh and holy images which they were made to inspire. The work now presented is another attempt of the same kind. It differs from the previous one, however, in many particulars, a he Great South Sea, the Hawaian Islands, and the Californias are its IV PREFACE . theme. Upper and Lower California, their conquest by the Spaniards, Indians, white inhabitants, their present state, surface, vegetation, streams, plains, mountains, volcanoes, animals— all these as they have been, and now are, will be found fully described. To what I have seen has been added authentic information from every known source. And now, dear reader, to your task. Mine is done. Should you laugh and weep, suffer and rejoice, with the actors in the wayfarings before you, and send your fancy in after-times over those rose-clad realms where they will lead you, and feel the dews of a pleasant remembrance falling on your life, I shall receive a full reward for my toil. Adieu, THE AUTHOR. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. The editor of this new Pictorial Edition of Farnam’s “ Adventures,” has added a History of the Conquest of California, from official documents and other authentic materials. He has also added a summary account of the most recent and celebrated “ Travels in Oregon,” including a descrip- tion of that new and important addition to our national domain. He has also added fifty-three pages of embellishments appropriate to the several subjects treated in the volume. The reader will perceive that, thus augmented, the work contains much that is important and interesting to all who feel desirous to watch the on- ward march of the Cheat Republic. CHAPTER I. A Reminiscence — A Spectacle — Oregon — Landward and Seaward — The Great South Sea — Magic Palace — Taking in Studding-sails — Caverns — Storm in Full Blast — Professor of Psalmody — Fur Hunter — A British Tar — An Author — A Seaboat — A Corkscrew — A Flagon — A Conversa- tion about Life in the Northwest — Its Dogs — Logs — Food— Surface — Lords of the North — Frozen Mountains — Moss — Flowers — Potatoes, Oats and Barley — Indian Wives and Sheep— The Arctic Shore — Suicide of a Brave Man — A Solo — Eel Pond — Ghost in the Shrouds — Tumult in Upper and Lower Ocean — Minor Key — War-cry — Special Pleading — The Sea — Wine and Song — To Bed. In a work entitled “Travels in the Great Western Prairies,” &c., to which the following pages are a sequel, I left my readers off the mouth of Columbia river, in sight of the green coast of Oregon. Lower Oregon ! A verdant belt of wild loveliness ! — A great park of flowering shrubs, of forest pines, and clear streams ! The old unchanged home of the Indian ; where he has hunted the moose and deer ; drawn the trout from the lake, and danced, sung, loved, and war- red away a thousand generations. I cannot desire for my- self any remembrances of the Past which shall bring me more genuine wealth of pleasurable emotions than those which came to me from that fourth sunset of December, 1840, when I was leaning over the bulwarks of the ship Vancouver, looking back on Oregon, and seaward over the great Pacific! A spectacle of true grandeur ! The cones of eternal snow which dot the green heights of the President’s range of mountains, rose on the dark outline of the distant land, and 6 SCENES IN THE PACIFIC. hung glittering on the sky, like islands of precious stones ; so brightly did they shine in the setting sun, and so com- pletely did the soft clouds around their bases seem to sepa- rate them from the world below ! The shores of Lower Oregon ! They rise so boldly from the sea ! Themselves mountains sparsely clad with lofty pines, spruce and cedar trees, nodding over the deep ! And then the ground under water ! No flats, no mud- banks there. The cliffs are piled up from the bottom of the ocean ! The old Pacific, with his dark depths, lies within one hundred yards of them ! And the surges that run in from the fury of the tempests, roll with unbroken force to the towering rocks, and breaking with all their momentum at once, making the land tremble, and send far seaward a mighty chorus to the shouting storm ! The Pacific ! the Great South Sea ! It was heaving at our bows ! steadily, wave on wave came and went and follow ■ ing each other in ceaseless march pressed onward ; like the world’s hosts in marshalled files, they hastened past us, as if intent to reach the solid shores, where some resistance would broach their hidden strength and pour their fury out ! Behold, the sea ! Its troubled wastes are bending and top- pling with a wild, plashing, friendly sound ; a deep, blue, uncertain vastness ; itself cold and passive ; but under the lash of the tempest, full of terrific life ! Our ship stood staunch upon the palpitating mass, and seemed to love it. Mizen and mizen-top, main and main-top, fore and fore- topsails, and the lower weather studding-sails were out. The breeze from the land which had carried us over the bar still held, every thread of canvass drew 7 , every cord w 7 as tight, and as we looked up through the rigging to the sky, the sails, cordage and masts sw 7 ayed under the clouds like the roofing of some magic palace of olden tales. All hands were on deck ; both watches sat about the windlass; while the second officer and mate looked at the horizon over the weather-bow 7 , and pointed out a line of clouds crowding ominously up the TRAVELS IN THE CALIFORNIAS. southwestern sky. The captain stood upon the companion- way ? looking' at the barometer. In a little time officers and passengers gathered in a knot on the larboard-quarter. I ken there s a storm coinin’ up frae the soo’est,” said the Scotch mate. “ The clouds loom fast, sir, in that quarter,” said Mr. Newell, the American second-mate. “ I reckon it will be upon us soon.” Captain Duncan needed no information in regard to the weather on these shores. He was everywhere an accomplish- ed seaman. On the quarter-deck— with his quadrant — on the spars and at the halyards ; but especially in that pro- phetic knowledge of the weather, which gives the sons of Neptune their control over the elements, he had no superiors. “ Ta ke in the studding-sails and make all fast on deck,” is the order, issued with quietness and obeyed with alacrity. Water casks, long-boat, and caboose are lashed, ropes coiled up and hung on the pins in the bulwarks, and the hatches put down in storm rig. The wind before which we were running abated, and the horizon along the line of departing light began to lift a rough undulating edge. “ Ta ke in the mainsail !” “ Go aloft and take a reef in the maintop !” “ In with the fore-main, and let the trysail run !” followed each other in haste, as the sailors moved to the cheering music of their songs in the work of preparing the ship to wrestle with a southwester. Everything being made snug, we waited its coming. The rough water which appeared a mere speck when the wind came upon the circle of vision, had widened till its ex- treme points lay over the bows. On it came, widening and elevating itself more and more ! The billows had previously- been smooth, or at least ruffled sufficient only to give their gently heaving sides a furzy aspect, while the tops occasional- ly rose in transparent combs, which immediately crumbled by their own weight into foam down their leeward acclivities. But now a stronger spirit had laid his arm on these ocean 8 SCENES IN THE PACIFIC. coursers. The wind came on, steadily increasing its might from moment to moment ! At first it tore the tops of the waves into ragged lines, then rent the whole sui face into frag- ments of every conceivable form, which rose, appealed and vanished, with the rapidity of thought, dancing like sprites among the lurid moving caverns of the sea ! A struggling vastness ! constantly broken by the flail of the tempest, and as often reunited, to be cleft still farther by a redoubled blast. The darkness thickened as the storm increased ; and when the lanthorn was lighted in the binnacle, and the night- watch set, the captain and passengers went below to their wine and anecdotes. Our company consisted of four per- sons. One was a singing-master from Connecticut, Texas, New Orleans, and St. Louis. He was such an animal as one would wish to find if he were making up a human me- nagerie ; so positive was he of step, so lofty in the neck, and dignified in the absurd blunders wherewith he perpetu- ally corrected the opinions and assertions of others. Another was a Mr. Simpson, a young Scotchman of re- spectable family, a clerk in the service of the Hudson’s Bay Company. This was a fine fellow, twenty-five years of age, full of energy and good feeling, well-informed on gene- ral topics, and like most other British subjects abroad, troubled with an irrepressible anxiety at the growing power of the States, and an overwhelming loyalty toward the mother-country and its Sovereign skirts. 1 he other pei- sonages were the commander, Duncan, and the author. The Captain was an old British tar, with a heart full of generosity for his friends, and a fist full of bones for his ene- mies. A glass of cheer with a messmate, and a rope’s end for a disobedient sailor, were with him impromptu produc- tions, for which he had capacity and judgment ; a hearty, five foot nine inch, burly, stout-chested Englishman, whom it was always pleasant to see and hear. This little company gathered around the cabin table, and all as one listened a moment to the beatings of the tempest 9 TRAVELS IN THE CALIFORNIAS. A surge — another — and a third still heavier, beat upon the noble ship and sent a thrill through every timber. On they rolled, and dashed, and groaned. But her iron heart only seemed to gather strength from the conflict, and inspire us with a feeling of perfect safety. u A fine sea-boat is the Vancouver, gentlemen,” said Cap- tain Duncan, “ she rides the storm like a petrel and with this comfortable assurance we seated ourselves at the table. I had nearly forgotten Tom, the cabin-boy ; a mere mouse of a lad ; who knew the rock of a ship and the turn of a corkscrew as well as any one ; and as he was spry, had a short name, a quick ear, and bore the keys to the sideboard and some things elsewhere, all well-bred stomachs would not fail to blast my quill, If I omitted to write his name and draw his portrait. Well, Torn was one of those sons of old England, who are born to the inheritance of poverty, and a brave heart for the seas. Like many thousand children of the Fatherland, when the soil refused him bread, he was apprenticed for the term of seven years to seamanship. And there he was, an English sailor-boy, submitting to the most rigorous discipline, serving the first part of his time in learning to keep his cabin in order, and wait at the table, that when, as he was taught to expect, he should have a ship of his own, he might know how to be served like a gentleman. This part of his appren- ticeship he performed admirably. And when he shall leave the cork-screw and the locker for the quarter-deck, I doubt not he will scream at a storm, and utter his commands with suf- ficient imperiousness to entitle him to have a Tom of his own. a Tom,” said Captain Duncan, u bring out a flagon of Ja- maica, and set on the glasses, lad. This stosrn, gentlemen, calls for cheers. When Neptune labors at this pace, he loves his dram. Fill gentlemen, to absent wives.” This compliment to the sacred ascendency of the domestic affec- tions was timely given. The storm howled hideously for our lives, our families were far distant over seas and moun- 10 SCENES IN THE PACIFIC. tains, the heart was pressed with sadness : we drank in silence and with swimming eyes. A pleasant conversation followed this toast, in which each one of our little band exhibited himself in his own way. The Captain was a hearty old Saxon, who had in- herited from a thousand generations, a love for home, its hearth and blazing evening fire, its old oaken table, its fami- ly arm-chair, and the wife who presided over that temple of holy affections. In him, therefore, we had the genuine spirit of those good old times when man used his physical and mental powers, to build about his heart the structures of posi- tive happiness, instead of the artificial semblances of these, which fashion and affectation draw around the modern home. Our professor of psalmody was the opposite of this. He had, when the red blood of youth warmed his heart, in the ways of honest nature, spoken sweet things to a lovely girl, won her affections, promised marriage, and as his beard grew became a gentleman ; that is, jilted her. He, therefore, was fond of freedom, could not be confined to so plain and quiet a business as the love of one woman, and the care of a family of children. “ It was quite horrid, indeed it was, foreman who had any music in his soul ; the mere idea was concen- trated picra to his moral stomach ; the thought, bah ! that a gentleman could ever think of being a daddy, and trotting on his paternal knee a semi-yearling baby.” Mr. Simpson was from the braes of Scotland. For many years he had lived an isolated and roving life, among the nows, morasses, and lakes of the wilderness, which lies west and north-west of Hudson’s Bay. He had been taught his catechism at kirk, and also a proper respect for the ties of the domestic sentiments. But the peculiar idea of manliness which grows up in those winter realms of danger, privation, and loneliness, had gradually habituated him to speak of these relations as desirable mainly when the body had ex- pended its energy in striding mountains, in descending rocky TRAVELS IN THE CALIFORNIAS. 11 torrents with boats laden with furs, and in the other bold enterprises of these daring traders. From him we obtained a description of some portions of that vast country occupied by the Hudson’s Bay Company; and some information on other topics connected with it. Life in the Company’s service was briefly described. Their travelling is performed in various ways at different seasons of the year and in different latitudes. In Oregon their journeys are chiefly made in Mackinaw boats and Indian canoes. With these they ascend and descend the various streams, bear- ing their cargoes, and often their boats, from the head-waters of one to those of another. In this manner they pass up the Cowelitz and descend the Chihilis with their furs and other goods ; thus do they reach the head-waters of the northern fork of the Columbia, pass over the Rocky Mountains, and run down the rivers and lakes to Canada. F arther north on the east side of the Rocky Mountain range, they travel much on foot in summer, and in winter (which is there the greatest part of the year) on sledges drawn by dogs. Ten or twelve of these animals are attached to a light sledge, in which the man sits wrapped in furs and surrounded by meat for his car- nivorous steeds and provisions for himself. Thus rigged, the train starts on the hard snow crust, and make eighty or one hundred miles before the dogs tire. When the time for rest comes, they are unharnessed, fed, tied to the bushes or shrubs, and the traveller enveloped in furs, addresses himself to sleep under the lea of a snow-bank or precipitous rock. When na- ture is recruited the train is again harnessed and put on route. The Aurora Borealis, which flames over the skies of those latitudes, illuminates the country so well, that the absence of the sun during the winter months offers no obstacles to these journeyings. Drawn by dogs over mountain and plain, under heavens filled with electric crackling light, the travel- ler feels that his situation harmonizes well with the sublime desolation of that wintry zone. In this manner these ad- 12 SCENES IN THE PACIFIC. venturous men travel from the mouth of Mackenzie’s river to York on Hudson’s Bay and to Canada. Their dwellings are usually constructed of logs in the form of our frontier cabins. They are generally surrounded by pickets, and in other respects arranged so as to resist any attack which the neighboring Savages may make upon them. They are usually manned by an officer of the Company and a few Canadian Frenchmen. In these rude castles, rising in the midst of the frozen north, live the active and fearless gentlemen of the Hudson Bay Company. The frosts of the poles can neither freeze the blood nor the energy of meh who spring from the little Island of Britain. The torrid, the temperate, and the frozen zones alike hear the language and acknowledge the power of that Wonderful race. The food of these traders is as rude as their mode of life. At most of the Forts they live almost exclusively on the white and other kinds of fish ; no vegetables of any description are obtainable; an occasional deer or woods buffalo or musk ox is procured ; but seldom is their fare changed from the produce of the lakes and streams. At a few of their stations not even these can be had ; and the company is obliged to supply them with pemican. This is buffalo meat dried, finely pulverized, mixed with fat and service berries, and secured in leathern sacks. They transport this from latitudes forty-eight and nine to different places on Mackenzie’s river, and other parts of the extreme north. Wild fowls, geese and ducks afford another means of subsistence. At York and other posts in the neighborhood of lakes, large numbers of these fowl are taken in the summer season, and salted for winter use. But with all their painstaking, these gentlemen live but poorly ; on a diet of flesh alone, and that of an indifferent quality. Hardy men are these lords of the snow. Their realm em- braces one-ninth of the earth. This immense territory Mr. Simpson informed us has a great variety of surface. On the north-eastern portion lie extensive tracts of per- petually frozen mountains, cut by narrow valleys filled with travels in the californias. 13 fallen cliffs, among which dash and roar numerous rivers on their way to the frozen sea. Scarcely any timber or other vegetation grows in these wastes. A lonely evergreen or a stunted white birch takes root here and there, and dur- ing the few weeks of v summer, mosses and linchens pre- sent a few verdant spots in the damp recesses of the rocks. But cold winds, laden with hail and sleet, howl over the budding of every green thing ! The flowers can scarcely show their petals and set their seeds, before winter with its cracking ices and falling snow embraces them ! The section of country which lies about Mackensie’s river, differs from that described, in having dense forests skirting portions of the valleys, and large plains of moss and linchen, on which feed the deer, buffalo, musk-ox and moose. The river itself is, in summer months, navigable for batteaux several hundred miles. It is well stored with trout, salmon, white and other fish. But the winters there also scarcely end, before they begin again their work of freezing land, stream, and sea. The extensive country lying on the head waters of the streams which run northward into the Frozen Ocean, east- ward into Hudson’s Bay, and southward into the Canadian waters, is composed of swamps, broken at intervals with piles of boulders and minor mountains, and dotted with clumps of bushes, plots of hassocks, and fields of wild rice. The waters of these table -lands form many lakes and lofty cascades on the way to their several destinations. The roar of these on the dreadful frozen barrenness around, Mr. Simpson represented to be awful in the extreme ; so wild, hoarse, and ringing are their echoes. We are informed that there are considerable tracts of arable land on the western side of Hudson’s Bay, occupied by several settlements of Scotch : that these people culti- vate nothing but potatoes, oats, barley, and some few garden vegetables ; and are altogether in a very undesirable con- dition. He also informed us of a tract of tillable land, 14 SCENES IN THE PACIFIC. lying some hundreds of miles northeast of Lake Superior, on which Lord Selkirk had founded a colony ; that this settlement contains about three thousand people, composed chiefly of gentlemen and servants, who have retired from the Company’s service with their Indian wives and half- breed children. They cultivate considerable tracts of land, have cattle and horses, schools and churches, a Catholic Bishop and a Protestant preacher of the English Church. Some years since a Mr. McLeod, from this settlement, went to Indiana and purchased a very large drove of sheep for its use. But in driving them a thousand miles over the prairies, their fleeces became so matted with poisonous burrs, that most of them died before reaching their place of destination. Mr. Simpson related a few incidents of an exploring ex- pedition, which the Company had despatched to the northern coast of America. The unsatisfactory results of those fitted out by the home goverment, under Parry, Franklin, Ross, and Back, which had been partially furnished with men and means by the Company, led it at length to undertake one alone. To this end it despatched, in 1S38, one of its officers, accompanied by our friend Simpson’s brother, well furnished with men, instruments, and pro\isions on this hazardous en- terprise. I have since been informed, that this Mr. Simpson was a man of great energy and talent— the one indeed on whom the Company relied for the success of the undertaking. From his brother I learned only that the unexplored part of the coast was surveyed, that the waters of Davis’ Strait were found to flow with a strong current westward, and enter the Pacific through Behring’s Strait ; and that Greenland conse- quently is an island or continent by itself ! The Mr. Simpson of this expedition isnow known to the civilized world to have trodden the ices and snows, and breathed the frozen air of that horrid shore ; and by so doing to have added these great facts to the catalogue of human knowledge ; and having be- come deranged in consequence of his incredible sufferings, to have blown out his own brains on the field of his glorious travels in the califorsias. 15 deeds. Our companion, poor fellow, was happily ignorant of that sad event, and spoke of the expedition only as one of great hardship, yet such as he would have gladly shared. His brave kinsman was then dead ! When Mr. Simpson pausedin these interesting narrations, our piofessor of psalmody, who had been beating the table with a tuning-fork, opened a solo upon Texas. He had been in that country, and was, in his own estimation, as familiar with its rivers, plains, forests and destiny, as with the paths across his father’s sheep pasture. Galveston was a London ln embryo : Sam Houston had inherited the knee-buckles and shoe-knots of Washington’s patriotism : the whole country was an Eden in which he had obtained the best site for a grist-mill and the finest pond for eels ! In short, we were informed in a tone of self-consequence, at least an octave above mi , on any known scale of conceit, that himself and a brace of fellow blades, on hearing that the government had offered a bounty of land to emigrants, went thither, remained long enough to perfect their title to a share of the public do- main, and were then obliged by pressing business to return to the States and leave others to fight and die for freedom. He had a belief that the Californias would make a respec- table abode for man, if it were conquered by a bold arm, a little music, and made into a Republic by a man, he did not mention his own name, whose character for bravery, intelli- gence and taste for the fine arts, he did not say psalmodv, would draw around him the unemployed intellect and cou- rage of the States. In conclusion he modestly remarked, that he himself was destined to the Californias, but did not say that he intended to open there a revolutionary singing-school. While this conversation was going on, the good old ship was struggling with the tempest. She headed north- westerly, and as the storm and swells came from the south- west, she at one time lay in the trough of the sea, and then, as the wave bore down upon her, swayed to the leeward a moment, rocked upon its summit, and as the surge passed 3 16 SCENES IN THE PACIFIC. on, reeled to the windward and slid into the trough again. This is the bitterest motion of a ship at sea, whether he whom it staggers be a “ land lubber” or u salt.” I he lat- ter finds it difficult to take his watch -walk from the wind- lass to the fore-stays, and swears that such a lullaby is as un- worthy of the ocean god as it is unseemly for a decent sailor, to stand, at one instant with one leg clewed up and the other out, and the next clewed the other way, and be com- pelled, at each change, to brace himself back in the attitude of being frightened to death by a ghost in the shrouds. The landsman, may perhaps feel too much awe to swear at the great deep, employed in its sublime labors ; or if he dare profane thus the majesty of his Maker’s movements, his noble self is usually the object of so much solicitude as to deny him any adequate opportunity of doing so. His stomach will demand much of the attention which he would fain bestow upon other objects ; and it will scarcely be re- fused what it requires. We sat at the table till eight bells. A delightful chit-chat we had ; such a variety of wisdom, such splendor of reminiscence, such bolts of reason rending and laying bare all the mines of thought were there ! But this and all that we had in expectancy that night ended not in smoke ; that would have been land-like ; but in a stealthy withdrawal of our company, one at a time, to pay their tribute to Padre Neptune, ihe singing master struck minor key first ; the fur hunter followed with his war-cry ; the Green Mountain lawyer came to the encoun- ter with a throat full of special pleading ; and after a hot melee each surrendered, on such terms as he could procure, all claim to the inborn rights of a quiet stomach and clean nose ; and turned in. The night was passed by us in the cabin in clinging to our berths. The seamen on deck struck the bells, changed the watch, and stood out like iron men on the tide of that terrible tempest ! Their thrilling “ 0 he oe” occasionally cut sharply and cheeringly into the TRAVELS IN THE CALIFORNIA S. 17 hoarse cadences of the storm ! Every other sound of liv- ing thing was buried in the clangor of the elements. The next morning opened with gloomy grandeur. The clouds brightened by the first rays of the sun in detached spots only, appearing and disappearing in rapid succession, intimated that the whole mass of serial fluid was fleeing at a fearful pace before the unabated tempest. As the light in- creased into full day, the canopy hung so dark and densely down the heavens, that night appeared to have retained the half of its dominion. It need not touch the water as fogs do ; but the massive heavy fold left between itself and the surface of the ocean, a space apparently three hundred yards in depth. That was a sight to wonder at. I could conceive of nothing in nature so far beyond the power of words to portray. Does the simile of a boundless tomb, vaulted with mourning crape, shaken by fierce winds, half lighted, filled with death-screams, represent it? I cannot tell : but such an idea rose as I looked out upon the scene. Old Ocean, too, was in a glorious mood. I had often seen the Atlantic lay with his mighty bosom heaving to the sky, calm and peaceful like a benevolent giant slumber- ing on a world of lesser things ; or, to use no figure, I had seen it slightly agitated, every particle tremulous under a soft breeze, every drop sending back the sunshine, or mul- tiplying indefinitely the stars of a clear June night. I had seen it when the swells were torn by a “dry squall,” or an hour’s “blow,” and heard its icebergs crack and plunge ; and seen its fearful waterspouts marching so near me that I could hear their awful roar ! But I had not seen it raised and rent, in the height of its tumult and power. All this was now before me in the great Pacific. At ten o’clock the storm had gained its utmost strength. The ship was laid to. The waves were dashing over her bulwarks. The Captain was standing braced upon the weather quarter, dressed in a long pea-jacket, stout sea- pants and boots, an oil- cloth cap covering head and shoul- IS SCENES IN THE PACIFIC ders. The watch on duty were huddled under the weather bow and lashed to the stays to prevent being washed over- board. The second mate stood midship, holding fast to the rigging. All were looking at the storm. The ship herself lay like a lost water bird, rising, falling, buried and mount- ing again, among the overwhelming waves. The appearance of the sea ! — Who can describe it 1 Like the land, it had its valleys, and mountains, and streams. But its vales, instead of flowers and grasses, were covered with wisps of torn water ; the mountains in- stead of snowy peaks, were billows, crested with combs of light blue water, tipped with foam, perpetually tumbling down and forming again, as the floods rushed on, lashing one another. And the streams were not such as flow through meadows and woodlands among creeping flower vines ; but swift eddies, whirling through the heaving caverns of the sea. Its voice ! Its loud bass notes ! — What is like it ? Not the voice of the storms which assemble with lightning, thunder and wind, and pour devastating hail and fire on the upper heights and vales of the Rocky Mountains. Nor is it like the deep monitory groan that booms down the Great Prairie Wilderness at midnight, growing louder as it draws near, until the accumulated electricity ignites in one awful explosion, rending the clouds and tearing up the shaken ground ! Nor is it like the voice of Niagara. That great cataract of the earth has a majestic stave, a bold sound, as it leaps from the poised brink to the whirl- ing depths below ! And when the ancient woods, with all their leafy canopies and ringing crags, stood up around it, and neither the hammer of the smith, nor other din of cul- tivated life, cast its vexing discords among the echoes, the sounds of Niagara must have resembled this sublime duett of the sea and storm ; but never equalled it ! It was a single note of nature’s lofty hymns. To the ear of the Indian who stood upon the shelving rocks and heard it j TRAVELS IN THE CALIFORNIA S. 19 who saw the floods come coursing down the rapids, bend upon the brink, and plunge with quickened speed into the vexed caldron, sending their peals to the rainbowed hea- ven, they must have borne an anthem as grand as his wild mind could compass — greater even. His bow must have dropped, and himself and the unharmed deer stood to- gether, in mute wonder at Niagara chanting to the shades and silence of the old American Wilderness ! But the song of the sea ! Is it not more than this ? Miles in depth ; hundreds of leagues in breadth ; an immensity drop on drop and mass on mass in motion ! The tempest piles up the surface into lofty ridges, every inch of which emits a peculiar liquid sound, which, mingling sweetly with each other far and wide, pulsates through the surrounding air and water ! Sweet and boundless melodies of the seas ! Ye know that the incumbent air takes up a part of them, while another part goes down into the still and motionless depths below ; the sublime unbroken darkness of the sea ! It was unpleasant to feel that the screaming cordage of our ships and the quarrelling of the hull and the waves, should deprive us of hearing the tones of the Pacific waters, during the strength of a hurricane, unmarred by any other sound. Can it ever be given man to hear it ? It is the Creator’s great choir ! Ocean tuned by His own hand, and swept by the fingers of His tempest ! Our good ship, carrying barely sail enough to make her obey the helm, beat from the southeast to the north- west. On the outward tack we generally made a few miles on our course, a part of which we lost on the other. It was vexatious to be buflfetted thus to no purpose ; to have our stomachs in a tumult; our jaws grinding down our teeth instead of eating ; but withal it was very amusing. I had always thought men in a tolerable state of misery, pos- sessed increased capacities to render themselves ridiculous. A number of common-place things proved this idea to be true. Turning-in was one of these. This is a process of 20 SCENES IN THE PACIFIC. going to-becl ; extraordinary in nothing else than the novel manner in which it is performed at sea in a gale. The reader will pardon me. Please step into the cabin of the Vancouver, and be seated by the nice little grate, filled with blazing coals from the mines of Paget’s Sound. You will perhaps amuse one eye with Tam O’Shanter, while with the other you explore. The six foot law r yer is gathering toward his berth. It is the lower one on the lar- board side of the cabin. His countenance, you will ob- serve, is in a miniature tempest. The ship rolls suddenly, his feet slip from under him, and he slides under the table accompanied by a bag of apples, a scuttle of coal, Tom the cabin-boy, and a hot poker! Coal, apples, and the law strown in indiscriminate confusion ! As one might ex- pect the lawyer extricates himself from his difficulty , enters a “ nolle prosequi ” against further proceedings in that direc- tion, and stretches himself in his berth, without attempting to persuade his wardrobe to take separate lodgings. The fur-trader seems determined to undress. Accord- ingly, when the ship, in her rollings, is nearly right side up, he attempts to take off his coat ; unfortunately, how- ever, when he has thrown it so far back as to confine his arms, the ship lurches heavily, and piles him up in a cor- ner of the cabin ! Odds-blood ! how his Scotch under-jaw smites the upper ! It appears that wrath usually fights its battles in that part of mortality to a greater or less extent. On this occasion our friend’s teeth seem to have been ignited and his eyes set blazing by the concussion ! As, however, there is nothing in particular to fight but the sea, and Xer- xes has used up the glory of that warfare, the fur-dealei takes to his berth, without further demonstration of him- self than to say that he thinks u the devil’s tail is whisking in the storm,” and that a his oxfoot majesty and the fin- tailed god must be quarrelling stoutly about the naiads.”' But the professor of psalmody is not to be prevented by these failures from unrobing himself for the embraces of TRAVELS IN THE CALIFORNIA S. 21 Somnus ; not he. u And if the planks of the ship will float me long enough it shall be done.” He does not say that he is on his way to the conquest of the Californias ; and that he will strip himself of his blue roundabout, as he will that beautiful country of its ill-fitting tyranny. His berth 's on the starboard side. The ship is pitching and dodging like a spent top. How his bravery will end under such circumstances is a question of no little interest. But that something will soon be done you perceive becomes evident ; for now as the starboard side lowers on the retreating wave, he seizes his outer garment with both hands, and with a whistle and jump that would do credit to a steam-car off the track, wrenches himself out of it just in time to seize the edge of his berth as the next surge strikes the ship and throws it suddenly on the other side. His vest comes off with more ease and less danger. Boots, too, are drawn without accident. But the pants ! they are tight ! He loosens the buttons ; slides them down ; with one hand he holds fast to the berth ; pulls off the left leg with the other, and is about extricating the right foot, but, alas ! that sud- den jerk of the ship scatters his half-clad person, bravery, pants and all, among the trembling trunks, stools, table- legs, &c., to the manifest detriment of the outer bark of his limbs ! At this moment Mr. Simpson is in the midst of his favorite passage — “ Ah Tam, ah Tam, thou : lt get thy fairin’, In hell they ’ll roast thee like a herin’.” The professor of psalmody, after some search, finds him- self again, and with courage unimpeached, lies down in silence. CHAPTER II. The next Morning— Eating— Mermaids— Cupid— A Sack of Bones on its Legs— Love— A Grandsire— She was a Woman— Chickens— A Black Son o’ the De’il — A Crack o’ the Claymore— Sublimity— Tropical Sight —Paternal Star— Cook— A Sense— Edge of the Trades— A Night- On Deck A Guess — A Look and Doubt — To be Dumbfoundered — A Bird Note — Mouna-Kea — Christmas Eve — Watch-Fires of Angels Birds — Fish— Homestead — Hawaiians— The Land — Moratai — Mooring —Landing at Honolulu— A Slice of Bull— Poi— The Death Wail- Hospitality— The Lover and his Destination— The Fur Hunter on the Back Track — The Professor of Psalmody. The next morning the storm was unabated. The furies seemed abroad. It was a cold sleety day. Both the at- mosphere and the ocean looked like maniacs. Not a shred of the visible world seemed at ease with itself ! Commo- tion, perpetual growls, screams and groans, came up from the tempestuous deep ! Above were clouds, hurrying as from a falling world ! Below was the ocean shaking ! Eating on this day was attended to in a very slight degree. When the dinner bell rang we were all on deck, standing in utter abandonment, to whatever the Fates might have in re- serve for us. Not one would have broken a Christmas wish- bone with the prettiest girl living, to decide whether we should go below or be tumbled overboard . Captain Duncan was a skilful diagnostician in all such cases. He urged us below. But the thought of bringing our nasal organs into the full odor of bilge water, the steam of smoking meat, po- tatoes, and bean soup, arrested our steps. The good Cap- tain, however, pressed us with renewed kindness, and we dragged ourselves down to the table. Ye Mermaids, how could ye ever learn to eat at sea ! How could ye, rocked to TRAVELS IN THE CALIFORNIAS. 23 sleep in infancy by the billows, educated in the school of the tempest, learn to hold your heads still enough to comb your glistening tresses ! and much more get food within your pearly grinders ! Pictures of woe were we, starving, yet loathing food ; thirsting, yet unable to drink ; wishing for a mote of the stable world to look upon, yet having nothing but the un- stable water and air ; imprisoned on the rolling deck, with no foothold, or any odor of flower or earth around. I am reminded here how interesting to the antiquarian would be the inquiry, whether or not Cupid was ever at sea in a storm. If he were, he would have crowned Hogarth’s im- mortality with its richest wreath, if transferred to canvass, in the act of running from the dinner-table, throwing his quiver behind him, and tipping his roguish face, bloated with the effort of a retching stomach, over the taffrail. Poor fellow, it makes one quiver to think if there ever were a Cupid, and he ever took passage from the Columbia river to the Hawaiian islands, and ever did attempt to eat, and while doing so were obliged to conform to the etiquette of sea sickness, how sadly he must have suffered, and how unlovely the arrow-god must have become ! This sea-sickness, however, is a farce of some conse- quence. Like the toothache, fever and ague, and other kin- dred follies of the body it has its origin in the faculty will please answer what. But seriously. It is an effort of our na- ture to assimilate its physical condition to the desires of the mind. Man s natural home as an animal is on land. As an in- tellectual being he seeks to pass this bound, and resorting to his capacity to press the powers of external nature into the service of his desires, he spikes planks to timbers, commits himself to the waves, rocks on their crests, habituates head and foot to new duties, and, girded with the armor of his im- mortal part, that wealth of Heaven, goes forth, the image and representative of his Maker, to see, to know, and to enjoy all things. But a truce to philosophy. We are on the sea. The 24 SCENES IN THE PACIFIC. elements have raved twelve days and are at rest again. Quiet and variable breezes from the north push us pleasantly along; appetites return ; we shave our chins, comb our hair, and begin once more to wear the general aspect of men. On the nineteenth of December our group of characters was honored by the appearance of a fine honest fellow from the steerage. He had suffered so much from sea-sickness,, that he appeared a mere sack of bones. He was a native of one of the Southern States ; but the Yankee spirit must have been born in him : for he had been to the Californias with a chest of carpenter’s tools, in search of wealth ! Un- fortunate man ! He had built the Commandante-General a house, and never was paid for it ; he had built other houses with like consequences to his purse ; had made many thousands of red cedar shingles for large prices and no pay; and last and worst of all, had made love, for two years, to a Spanish brunette, obtained her plighted faith for marriage, and did not marry her. It was no fault of his. During the last years of his wooing, a Californian Cava- liero, that is, a pair of mustachios on horseback, had been in the habit of eating a social dish of fried beans occasionally with the father of the girl, and by way of reciprocating his hospitality, he advanced the old gentlemen to the dignity of a grandsire. This want of fidelity in his betrothed wrought sad havoc in our countryman’s affections. He had looked with confiding tenderness on her person, returned her smile, and given her one by one his soul’s best emotions. Such affections, when they go forth and are lost, leave a void to which they never re- turn. He was alone again without trust, with nothing on earth or rather, on the sea, to love but his carpenter’s tools. The object of his regard had disgraced herself and him. To avoid the scene of his misery, he had invested in horses the little money he had accumulated ; accompanied the Hudson’s Bay Trading Company to Oregon, and having cultivated land a a year or two in the valley of the Willamette, had sold his TRAVELS IN THE CALIFORNI AS. 25 stock and property, and shipped for home, with every tooth strung with curses against the Californian Spaniards. California itself, not including the bodies or souls of the people, he thought to be a desirable country. The very at- mosphere was so delicious that the people went half-naked to enjoy it. Hard to abandon was that air, and the great plains and mountains covered with horses, black Spanish cattle, and wild game. The fried beans, too, the mussels of the shores, and the fleas even, were all objects of pleasure, utility or industry, of which he entertained a vivid recollec- tion. But that loved one ! she was beautiful, she was kind, alas ! too kind. He loved her, she was wayward ; but was still the unworthy keeper of his heart ; still a golden re- membrance on the wastes of the past — lovely, but corroded and defiled. His opinion was that she was a woman ! The weather became sensibly milder each day as we moved on our course ; the water warmer, the fish and fowl more abundant. The latter presented themselves in considerable variety. The white and grey albatross, with their long nar- row wings, and hoarse unmusical cry, cut through the air like uneasy spirits, searching the surrounding void for a place of rest, and finding none ! Our cook contracted a paternal re- gard for these birds ; the basis of which was, that whenever he threw overboard the refuse of the table, they alighted in the wake of the ship, and ate the potatoe peelings, bits of meat, &c., with a keen appetite. “Ah,” said he of the spit, u it is a pleasure to cook for gentlemen in feathers even, when they eat as if they loved it.” But he was still more partial to Mother Carey’s chickens. In a fair morning these beautiful birds sat on the quiet sea in flocks of thou- sands, billing and frollicking in great apparent happiness. “There’s your poultry, gentlemen,” cried his curly pate, peering from the galley. “ Handsome flocks these about the stacks of water ; plumper and fatter, I’ll warrant ye, than an3 r that ever squawked from the back of a Yorkshire Donkey. No need of cramming there to keep life agoin’. 26 SCENES IN THE PACIFIC. They finds themselves and never dies with pip or dys- pepsy.” u Hout wi’ yer blaguard pratin’, ye black son of the De’il ; and mind ye’s no burn the broo’ agen. Ye’re speerin’ at yer ugly nose, an’ ne’er ken the eend o’ ye whilk is upward. Ye sonsie villain; when I’se need o’ yer clatter I’se fetch ye wi’ a rope’s-end. And now gang in and see yer dinner is fit for Christian mooths.” This salutation from our Scotch mate, drove in the head of our poultry man, and we heard no more dissertations on sea- fowl during the voyage. At dinner the mate congratu- lated the company on the excellence of the pea-soup, re- marking that it u smacked muir o’ the plaid than usual,” because he “ had gi’en the cook a crack o’ the claymor on his bagpipe ; a keekin, as he war, at things wi’out when he should ha’ been o’ stirrinhis meal.” Trifling incidents like this occasionally broke the monotony of our weary life. Our latitude and longitude were taken daily at twelve M., and the report of these and the distance from the islands al- ways gave rise to some prophetic annnouncements of the day and hour when we should anchor in the dominions of Kamehameha . The evenings also furnished a few diversions and pleasant objects of contemplation. Bathing was one of the former. After the shadows of night had set in, we used to present ourselves at the mainstays, and receive as much of the Ocean as our love of the sublime by the gallon, or our notions of cleanliness demanded. And when the hoot- ing, leaping, and laughing of the ceremony were silenced, the cool comfort of the body left the mind in listless quiet- ude, or to its wanderings among the glories of a tropical sky. It was the 24th of December ; the mid-winter hour. But the space over us was as mild-and soft a blue as ever covered a September night in the States. The stars sent down a deli- cate sprinkling light on the waters. The air itself presented some peculiar aspects. It was more nearly transparent than any I had ever breathed ; and there seemed to be woven into TRAVELS IN THE CALIFORNIAS. 27 all its thousand eddies a tissue of golden and trembling mist, streaming down from the depths of Heaven ! There was a single sad spot on the scene. The north star, so high and brilliant in the latitude where I had spent my previous years, was gradually sinking into the haze about the horizon. I had in very early life looked wdth greater interest upon that than any other star. The little house which my deceased father had built on the shore of a beautiful lake among the green woods of Vermont, stood “north and south” upon the autho- rity of that star. And after he had died at that humble out- post of the settlements, leaving me a boy of nine years, his death-bed, the little house, and the star which had guided my parent’s hand in laying the foundation on the brow of the deep wilderness, came to be objects of the tenderest recol- lection. I was sorry to see it obscured ; for it alwmys burned brightly in our woodland home ; and was the only thing which, as years rolled on-, remained associated with paternal love. I remember, too, another class of emotions that gave oc- cupation to my heart in those beautiful nights. We thought and talked of Cook. He had ploughed those seas long be- fore us ; had discovered the group of islands to which our voyage tended ; had met a fearful death at the hands of the inhabitants ; and some of his bones yet lay, scraped and prepared for the gods, in the deep caverns of Hawaii ! The waters rippling at our ship’s side, had borne him ; had rushed in tempests, and lain in great beauty around him ; had greeted the discovery flag of the brave old Fatherland, and heard its cannon boom ! We were sailing under the same flag. It was not, indeed, the same identical bunting which floated in 1789 ; but it was the emblem of the same social organization, of the same broad intelligence ; the in- signia of the same Power, whose military embattlements, grain fields and homes, gird the Earth ! I v 7 as glad to ap- proach the Hawaiian Islands on the track of Cook, under the old British flag. Is there a human sense which derives its nutriment from 28 SCENES IN THE PACIFIC. (he tilings which are gone ? Is there a holy-flower which springs up among the withered tendrils of buried beauty? a strong and vigorous joy, which, like the Aloe, blooms a moment on the cold midnight of heavy sorrow ? Is there an elevation of the whole being into a higher condition, when we wander among the trees, the ruins and the graves of former times? It maybe so. For surely he who treads the dust of Rome and stands on the ruins of Thebes, has a species of previous existence wrapped about him. He sees in the one case armies thronging the Appian-way, hears the multitude surging in the forum under the enthusiasm kin- dled by Cicero, and feels that the eagle of freedom is throw- ing the pinions of his protection over the energies of man. In the other case he hears the voice of the mighty chief lain summoning his millions of subservient hands. The hammer and the chisel, from the beginning to the end of day, send up their vast din to the passing hours. The moun- tain columns of Thebes stand up in the presence of the pyra- mids ! And a subject land bows in servitude to a great and controlling intellect. We are there, and form an integral wave in the sea of vitality that flowed forty ages ago ! We venerate the broken tomb of the past. We knock gently at its gate, and find our bodies and minds grow vigorous and happy in those sublime imaginings, which carry our entire selves back to see and converse with those men, the mere ruins of whose deeds still astonish mankind ! We retired to rest this evening in unusually fine spirits ; for, with the aid of the good breeze piping down from the northwest, we expected sight of land by the next sunset. Our sleep, howmver, was not remarkably deep, for I recol- lect that the wind freshened during the night, as it generally does in the edge of the trades, and compelled the morning- watch to take in sail. The noise occasioned by this move- ment was construed, by the wakeful ear of our desires, into a shortening canvas to prevent running on land ; and we turned out to see it. But it was yet beyond view. The TRAVELS IN THE CALIFORNIAS. 29 night, however, was worth beholding. It was one o’clock ; the sky oveihead was clear and starry 5 around the north- western horizon hung a cluster of swollen clouds, like Moorish towers, faintly tipped with the dim light. In the southwest lay another mass, piled in silent grandeur, dark battlement-like, as if it were the citadel of the seas ! The waters were in an easy mood. The ship moved through them evenly, save that she cut the long smooth swells more deeply than the space between them, and occasionally started from his slumber a porpoise or a whale. We turned-in again and slept till the breakfast dishes clat- tered on the table, and Tom informed us that Mr. Newell supposed he had seen at sunrise the looming of the land in the southeast ! That announcement brought us to our feet ; sleep ga\ e place to the most active efforts at hauling on and buttoning up the various articles of our wardrobe. u On deck! on deck! where away the land?” and we tasked our eyes with their utmost effort to scan the nature of the dark embankment on which the mate had founded his au- guries. The excitement at length drew all the passengers and officers to the starboard-quarter ; each man looked and expressed himself in his own way. To guess, was the Yankee’s part ; to look and doubt, was John Bull’s plea- sure ; to wuss it might be true, was the Scotch contribu- tion ; and to reckon awhile and commend himself to be dumbfoun ered if anything could be known about it, was the Carolinian carpenter’s clincher. The matter left standing thus, we obeyed Tom’s summons to breakfast. While engaged in filling our countenances with the reali- ties of life, we were startled with a bird’s note from the deck ! It proved to come from one of those winged songsters of the islands, which often greet the toiling ship far at sea, and with their sweet voices recall to the soul, weary with the rough monotony of an unnatural life, the remembrance and antici- pation of the land ; the green and beautiful land ; where the glorious light brightens the flowers ; where the flowers shed 30 SCENES IN THE PACIFIC. their perfume on the air, and the fruits of trees, and shrubs, and plants, are poured into the lap of the ripened year. Who does not love the birds 1 who is not made better and happier by hearing them sing among the buds and leaves, when the streams begins to babble, and the mosses to peer above the retiring snows ? when the violet opens, and meadows and forests change the brown garb of winter for the green mantle of the young year? No one who loves nature and can sympathize with it. But this one — perched in the rigging of the ship in which we had been imprisoned for weeks — a messenger from the glens and hills sweetly chanting our welcome to them, was an object of the tenderest interest. It had the cordial greet- ing of our hearts ; and while talking about it, we could not forbear reaching our hands towards it, and grieving that we had no intelligible language wherewith to convey our salu- tations, and ask the tidings from its beautiful home. The captain consulted his reckoning, and lound that we lay about one hundred miles northwest-by-north from the island of Hawaii. The breeze, instead of decreasing with the ascent of the sun, as it had done for a number of days past, held on ; and with all the weather studding-sails out, we made about ten knots during most of the morning. About ten o clock, Mr. Newell, who had been watching that embankment of cloud in the southwest, which had excited our hopes at sunrise, touched his hat to Captain Duncan and remarked, “ That cloud retains its bearing and shape very much like the loom- ing of land, sir. We must be in sight of some of the islands . we made ten knots by the log, sir, during my watch.” The Captain had expressed his belie! that he could sail his ship under that cloud without lead line, or copper bottom; and it was still his opinion that an English commander like him- self, an old salt of thirty years’ standing, would be as likely to know the complexion of theland as any gentleman withless experienced optics. However, he sent Tom for his glass and TRAVELS IN THE CALIFORNIAS. 31 peered into it with the keenest search. It was delightful, meantime, to us land-lubbers, to watch the workings of his face. There was a gleam of triumph creeping over it as he first brought his glass to bear upon the. object. But as the highest part of the pile came into the field of vision, his cheeks dropped an instant, then curled into the well-known lineaments of chagrin, and then into those of rage, as if he would rather all the land were sunk, than he be found mis- taken in a matter so purely professional. u Damn the land !” he at length exclaimed ; “ I suppose it must be Mauna-Kha,” and gave the glass to a passenger. The breeze piped up and we moved on merrily. Merrily flew the gladdening waters from the prow ; steadily as the masts stood out the canvass on the clear blue sky ; and brightly beamed the warm and mellow day on the sea. The Scotch mate, who swore by any dozen of things that his memory happened to seize, affirmed by his blood and the whisky that had been buried seven comfortable years at his auld aunt’s homestead, that he would see the lassies of Hono- lula before he was a day older ; the professor of psalmody sung, “Here’s a health to thee, Tom Moore the Hawaiian Island servantsof the Hudson’s Bay Company began to count their money preparatory to the purchase of poi ; the crew began to tell yarns about “sprees” they had enjoyed in Chili, New Holland, Liverpool, Vera Cruz, St. Petersburgh and Montevideo ; the six foot bootswain began to wffiistle ; Tom began to grin ; a former cabin-boy began to think of his mother, whom he expected to meet in the islands ; the visitor bird chirped in the rigging ; and all for joy ! For now the lofty peaks of Hawaii loomed above the clouds, the sea-weed gathered on the prow, and the odor of the land puffed over us. At five o’clock the breeze slackened a^ain, and until nightfall the ship barely moved enough to obey her helm. Near ten in the evening it freshened, but as we were in the neighborhood of a lee-shore, the captain thought it prudent 32 SCENES IN THE PACIFIC. to keep good sea-room, and accordingly shortened sail and lay off a part of the night. Ihis was Christmas eve, that nucleus of so much social and religious joy throughout the Christian world, and a merry one it was to us. Not so in the ordinary sense of the trencher and cup, the music, dance, and the embrace of kindred ; nor rendered such by the pealing anthem or the solemn prayer, swelling up through the lofty arches hung with boughs of ever-green and the prophetic star of Beth- lehem ! But nature herself seemed worshipping ! The heavens were unmarred by a single breath of mist, except what rested upon the heights of Hawaii ; and on all its vault the stars shone, not as brightly as in the frosty skies of the temperate zones, but with a quiet subdued lustre, as if they were the watch-fires of angels assembled to celebrate the earth’s great jubilee. The Pacific, too, lent the scene its most charming condi- tion. Wide and gently curved swells rolled down from the north, smooth, and noiseless, except when they dashed upon our noble ship, or were broken by the dolphin coursing through and dotting them with phosphorescent light ! The sea-birds were hailing each other a merry Christmas. The grey and mottled albatross, flying from billow to billow, occasionally clipped the waves with his sword-shaped wings, and shouted gladly to the elements ! The gulls and other birds sat in countless flocks in every direction, sinking, rising and chattering on the panting sea ? And schools of tiny fish with bright golden backs swam by the side of the ship, as children, after long absence, gather with cherish- ed remembrances around the old homestead on this blessed night. At dawn on the 25th one of the islands lay six mile dis- tant in the southeast. The sky was clear ; the sea smooth ; the porpoises blowing about us ; aright whale was spouting a hundred rods astern ; and our Hawaiians, looking from the mainstays at the land, were uttering their beautiful language TRAVELS IN THE CALIFORNIAS. 33 of vowels with great volubility. Poi (the name of their national dish), wyliini (woman), and iri (chief), were the only words I then understood ; and these occurred very often in their animated dialogues. Poor fellows ! they had been five years absent from their poi ; five years separated from the brown beauties of their native isles ; five years away from their venerated sovereign. No wonder, there- fore, they were charmed with the dim outline of their native land ! A mass of vapor hung along its heights and con- cealed them from view, save here and there a volcanic spire which stood out on the sky, overlooking cloud, mountain, and sea. As the light increased to full day, this cloudv mass was fringed on the edge nearest us with delicate golden hues ; but underneath it and inward toward the cliffs, the undisturbed darkness reached far eastward, a line of ni