An Old Sailor's Yarns

CHAPTER I

Notwithstanding the success of the many daring and lawless adventurers who visited the Pacific Ocean, or "Great South Sea," as it is called in the maps and travels of the period, and who reaped many a golden harvest there, about the time of the first James and Charles of England, the coasts washed by its waves were but seldom visited, and its waters seldom ploughed by any other keels than those of discovery ships for many years. Chili, Peru, Mexico, and California, after having been definitively ceded to the Spanish crown, constituted an El Dorado, whose gates could only be opened by a formal declaration of war. Spain was generally considered by the other European powers to have a double right to South America, namely, that of discovery and conquest; and after an ineffectual struggle to wrest the golden prize from the grasp of its legitimate possessor, England, and the rest of the "high contracting powers," acquiesced in her possessing it, the more readily because they wished the same kind of title should be acknowledged in their own case. Accordingly discovery and conquest have, to this day, been considered as good and lawful titles, and a sort of deed of conveyance, on the part of the natives, to their discoverers and conquerors of all and sundry their lands and landed estates, together with their goods and chattels, when of any value.

His Most Catholic Majesty, then, finding his claim to the New World fully established, set about civilizing his new conquest in good earnest, and sending out swarms of priests, backed of course by the military portion of the secular arm, with glory to God on their lips, and hatred to his creatures in their hearts, with the sword in one hand and the crucifix in the other, soon convinced the unhappy natives of their damnable heresies. Their simple religion was destroyed, millions perished by the sword or the tender mercies of the Holy Inquisition, and as many more in the mines; and civilization and religion kissed each other, and rested from their labors of love.

This was the most received method of converting whole nations at once, then in vogue – we Protestants of the present day are far more humane; we only distribute among the newly discovered nations of the earth, rum and Calvinism, gunpowder and the venereal disease, and with these powerful agents our missionaries and merchants, have succeeded in causing Dagon to bow down before them – over all the civilized world. New Holland seems to be the only uncivilized part of this watery ball, but New Holland holds out no temptations to the missionary; the inhabitants are a little too cannibally given, and martyrdom is altogether obsolete; besides, it is doubted by our soundest theologians whether Christianity was ever intended for a people so brutal and debased.

Spain, at the time I refer to, was renowned in arts and in arms; her commerce extended from the East to the West Indies, and she was for a time one of the most powerful of the kingdoms of Europe. Her priests, finding the New World a land overflowing, not exactly with milk and honey, but with what in all ages and in all countries is considered infinitely better, gold and silver, and abounding in every thing that could pamper the pride and gratify the sense, founded churches and monasteries, while her viceroys built cities and forts, and South America became the richest jewel in the diadem of His Catholic Majesty. To secure this jewel entirely to himself seems to have been his chief anxiety, and accordingly all foreigners were rigidly excluded from its sea-ports, and although the "Assiento," or contract for supplying the colonies with African slaves, was enjoyed successively by the English and French, both of whom successively abused it by smuggling immense quantities of their respective manufactures into those colonies, the duty of supplying them with European merchandise was carried on finally solely by means of register ships, as they were called, Cadiz being the only European port where they were permitted to load and discharge.

The whaling ships were only permitted to procure supplies, or "recruit," as our unctuous brethren of Nantucket call it, at certain fixed and well-fortified ports. Still even these managed to carry on quite a respectable business in the smuggling way, especially with the ports of Mexico and California.

But a new flea was about getting into Don Diego's ear – the peace of 1783, while it added an infant giant to the catalogue of earthly "principalities and powers," also liberated from the fetters of commercial, as well as political restraints, a people active, restless, daring, prying, and enterprising to the last degree; a people whose skill in navigation and swift-sailing vessels rendered them absolutely intangible to an enemy that took occasion to chase them, while their courage, when they thought proper to "stand to it," as dame Quickly says, made them dangerous antagonists. This the reader probably "guesses" must be brother Jonathan, and he guesses about right. The same spirit of restless curiosity that prompts a cat, when she sets up her Ebenezer in a new house, to examine every portion of it, from cellar to garret, seemed to have possessed our grandpas more strongly than it does us of the present age.

This national character of ours is owing doubtless to our having been placed by the hand of Heaven in an immense unexplored region, and was no doubt much increased by the spirit-stirring scenes of the revolutionary war, which beheld our "old continentals" one day ferreting out the long-tailed Hessians from the woods of Saratoga, and another "doing battle right manfullie" on the plains of South Carolina.

While they of the land service were pushing their advanced posts to the foot of the Rocky Mountains, our seamen were carrying our striped bunting into every portion of the navigable world. Such were the people whose arrival in the Pacific the Spanish commandantes and viceroys awaited with no small fear and trembling. They knew vaguely that we had just come off victorious from a long, fierce, and bloody struggle with powerful England, and while they consigned us pell-mell to the devil, as "malditos Americanos," they doubted whether we had the additional claim to go there upon the strength of being heretics. The captains of the guarda-costas redoubled their vigilance, and sailed in chase of not a few albatrosses and whale-spouts, such was the zeal that animated them.

I should have described these redoubtable crafts, the guarda-costas, before – they were armed vessels of different classes, varying from light frigates down to mere gunboats, and were distributed along the coasts to protect trade, and prevent smuggling.

When however these formidable strangers did arrive, the readiness with which they conformed to the numerous, and in most cases vexatious, port regulations, their quiet behavior on shore, and the many novelties and luxuries that they freely distributed to the port officers, completely blinded them to the instinctive disposition to trade that characterizes my beloved countrymen, especially the New Englanders, who were the first to carry our flag into the Pacific, as they were also the first to display it in Europe.

I have made these long-winded and apparently uncalled-for remarks partly to show my learning, but chiefly in conformity with the fashion of the day, that requires that every story, long or short, should be ushered in by at least one chapter of prefatory remarks. I do not intend to be so unreasonable; but before this my first chapter is finished, shall give my readers an idea of my purposed principal scene of operations.

If then, the reader will turn to the proper map, he will find in about the latitude of twenty-one north, Cape Corrientes; and not far from this three islands, called Las Tres Marias; the Three Marys, that is, so named after the three Marys of the New Testament.

Geographers, when they make maps, seem to start with the notion that there must be a certain number of islands, &c. inserted in each map; and when they have located the larger and more important ones within fifteen or twenty degrees of latitude and longitude of their proper places, which is as near as they commonly come to the truth, they proceed to distribute the remainder according to their own taste. In compliance with this fashion of theirs, they have laid down upon all modern maps, especially those that are called the best, and in nearly the latitude that I have above mentioned, and longitude that I have not, namely, about one hundred and fifteen west from Greenwich Observatory, a little island which they call Revalligigedos. I have passed twice over the spot where this little island with the big name "stays put," in all maps by them, and have conversed with many whalemen and others, who, taken collectively, have sailed over every square inch of salt water in that place, and none of them have seen it. So too, they have studded the ocean off Cape Horn so thickly with islands, that a landsman wonders how a ship of any size can manage to squeeze through into the Pacific. I have passed that cape three times, and have been working to windward off them some weeks, but although we always kept a bright look-out for ice islands and strange vessels, we never, to use a vulgar expression, saw "hide or hair" of these supererogatory islands.

But to return; in a direction nearly east from the Three Marys, the reader will find, on most maps, a small river, called by the Spaniards, in their usual style of bombast, El Rio Grande, or the Great River; though the identical legs that I now stand upon have waded across it at low water, and, except cutting my foot with an oyster-shell, there was nothing very remarkable in the exploit. At the mouth of this mighty stream is an island on which stands the town of St. Blas.

The Spaniards, as it is well known, when they discovered America, christened every cape, bay, mountain, river, island, rock, or shoal after some saint or other, but the learned are somewhat puzzled to know who this St. Blas can be. In my poor opinion, the difficulty is easily enough got over – the word Blas is only a corruption of Blast, and accordingly we shall find that St. Blast, properly so called, is neither more nor less than our old friend Æolus, of the heathen mythology, smuggled into the calendar, who, being the god of blasts and puffs, might well be canonized under the name of St. Blast, without doing violence to the tender consciences of the good Catholics. In this way, according to Dean Swift, Jupiter became Jew Peter, and by a natural transition, Saint Peter. Whether he is right or not, one thing is certain, that sundry temples, of which the veritable Jupiter has been "seized in fee tail," I think lawyers call it, from time immemorial, have quietly become "St. Peter's churches," to the great edification of the Christian world, and incredible advancement of religion and piety.

The island, upon which St. Blas is perched, slopes off gradually to the eastward, but to the south and west descends in a sheer precipice of two or three hundred feet in height. The town was taken and retaken several times during the sanguinary war of the Mexican revolution. The last time it was in the hands of the royalists, they compelled all the male inhabitants, and, report says, not a few women and children besides, that they suspected of favoring the Patriot cause, to leap off this precipice. Soldiers were stationed at the foot of the cliff, to despatch those who reached the bottom with any signs of life. This piece of information I had from a widow who kept a shop in the Plaza, and who also told me, "with weeping tears," that her husband was one of the number who took the fearful leap.

Rather on the north-west side, the hill is surmountable by a zig-zag path, up which a loaded mule can climb with some difficulty. On the west, or seaward, side, is a strip of flat land, of considerable width, on which formerly stood the royal arsenal, rope-walks, and warehouses, the ruins of which were standing in 1822, when I visited the place. On the western extremity of this level land is a small village, called, as usual in such cases, the Porte, or landing place. The bay, which is a fine harbor, sweeps far to the eastward, when the land, trending away to the southward, with a slight inclination westerly, becomes lost in the distance. The more immediate, or inner, harbor, is formed by a point of land opposite the Porte, on the southern extremity of which is a battery, formerly of considerable dimensions, and strength, but since suffered to decay, and is much reduced in effectiveness. It was intended to command the harbor and anchorage; but with Spanish artillerymen, a mile offing, and reasonably good weather, a ship would be as safe from its fire, for three months at least, as though she was all the while in London Docks.

At the distance of two or three miles from the usual anchorage, and forming an excellent leading mark for the bay, is Pedro Blanco, or the White Rock, of two hundred feet height, perfectly precipitous and inaccessible, and resembling a huge tower, rising abruptly from the sea.

Taken altogether, the bay of St. Blas forms a very beautiful prospect, with the Andes in the back ground, which, with their

"Meteor standard to the winds unfurl'd,

Look from their throne of clouds o'er half the world;"

its white sand beach, fading gradually away to the south and east, its town roosting on its barren rock, and indistinctly seen; its low lands covered with a luxuriant growth of lime and other trees; and lastly, by way of seasoning, its moschetoes and sand-flies.

CHAPTER II

A knight he was, whose very sight would

Entitle him mirror of knighthood.

Tropical climates have certainly one advantage over all others, that is not to be held in light esteem. They have rainy and dry seasons, that are exclusively rainy and dry. During six months, or nearly as long, the windows of heaven stand wide open, by night and by day, and the liquid blessing descends upon the thirsty earth beneath "in one lot," as auctioneers say; while on the other hand, the dry season has its great and manifold advantages and pleasures. With us in the temperate zone, as geographers call it, I suppose, for want of another name, a man does not think of riding twenty miles without India rubbers, a great coat, boots, and an umbrella, to say nothing of an entire change of raiment, if he is a prudent, cautious old bachelor, or widower; and even then he is as likely to get a ducking as to have fine weather.

During a tropical dry season, on the contrary, a journey of two hundred miles may be safely undertaken, without any of these encumbrances; with two or three clean shirts, a man may scamper about for months, like a Roman light-infantryman, "impedimentis relictis," unless he should be so ill advised as to carry his wife and children with him.

Throughout the rainy season, many diseases arise, and make great destruction among those who remain on the sea-coast; those who can afford it, retreat to the more salubrious mountain regions, while, as aforesaid, those who stay behind, being generally the poor, the worthless, and the useless part of the community, fall victims to the numerous diseases generated by the excessive rains, and the then swampy condition of the country. This annual purgation of society, is perhaps another blessing of a tropical country. I know of more than one community, whose moral, and in some measure physical health, would in my mere mortal and short sighted notion of the fitness of things, be vastly benefited by the visitation of an energetic, wide sweeping epidemic. Human society is very like a grate full of ignited anthracite coal, those parts of it that have lost their combustibility, and become worthless, are constantly filtering down through the bottom of the grate; and so in society, those individuals, who are daily falling from a state of grace in the eyes of their fellow-worms, either as regards fashion, or property, or reputation, go to swell the number of the outcasts from the ranks of "good society;" a convenient phrase that has recently been invented, and signifies the speaker's own particular friends and acquaintances, though he and they may be at that very moment getting out stone on Blackwell's Island. So you see, reader, that it is fore-ordained, for I am a good deal of a fatalist, that one of the ingredients of civilized society should be a certain proportion of poor miserable devils, such as you and I both know.

It was just at the close of the rainy season, when Nature looked infinitely better and fresher for having her face washed, though she had been six months about it; the air seemed purer and more healthful, and the sky looked clearer and of a richer blue, for the half year's drenching; it was at this particular time of the year, that we have thought proper to raise the curtain, and introduce the reader into the business part of the story.

It was between ten and eleven o'clock in the forenoon, the land breeze had done blowing, and the usual interregnum of calm, previous to the commencement of the sea-breeze, had taken place – the broad bay lay like a huge mirror, varied indeed by the long and regular undulations of the swell from the main ocean, which, though perhaps sufficient to discompose a landman's stomach, would not affect that of a sailor, who would probably testify under oath, that the water was "just as smooth as a mill-pond." The pelican, that grave and contemplative bird, sat on the rocks near the water's edge, with his neck coiled up and stowed away in some recess in his capacious crop, the fish forgetting, or sailed on lazy wings across the bay, to seek some sequestered spot to doze away the time, and digest his huge breakfast – the graceful white crane of Mexico was wading about, flapping her wings, to drive the small fish into shoaler water, where she might pick them up at her leisure – the gaudy Spanish ensign, resembling three flannel petticoats, two red and one yellow, hung lifeless by its staff, as though said petticoats had just got through a hard day's washing – a soldier, with a paper segar in his mouth, was lounging backwards and forwards on that part of the parapet of the battery next the sea, while another, his counterpart, was "doing military duty" in the same soldierly manner on the quay opposite.

I may as well explain to the reader now as at a future time, that every collection of houses in South America, however small, has an open space in the centre, called the Plaza; and an American Spaniard could no more conceive of a town or village without such plaza, than he could form one of Mr. Locke's abstract ideas of a horse, which ceases to be an abstract idea the moment it becomes invested with a body, head, legs, mane, tail, saddle, bridle, belly-band, or crupper.

In the plaza of the Porte before mentioned was a multifarious assemblage: the barrack for a captain's guard, with the arms of the guard piled in front of it, formed one side, and the others were bounded by the quay or different buildings; a detachment of idlers were sunning themselves, and engaged in relieving each other from certain troublesome companions, that invariably infest the clothes and hair of all Spaniards and Russians, from the king to the beggar; jackasses, boys, and dogs occupied the rest of the square, and were differently engaged. At this moment a sergeant ran into the square, exclaiming, "el Commandante!" The military guard fell into their ranks at the tap of the drum, the idlers and boys took up a strong position in one corner, the jackasses were cudgelled into a retreat, while the dogs, like the pigs in New York, being free of the city, provided for themselves. A moment or two elapsed after these preparations had been made, when a party of mounted officers dashed into the square at full gallop, as the South Americans always ride. The guard presented arms, the dogs barked their congratulations, and the party, having lighted fresh segars, walked down to the quay, directly opposite which lay an old dismantled Spanish frigate, and moored alongside her was a schooner, whose formidable length of main boom, and raking masts, announced her both a clipper and a Yankee. She was indeed an American schooner, that had been taken "flagrante delicto," in the very act of smuggling, for which she was condemned, and her crew sent to the mines. Such was the jealousy of the "authorities," that they unshipped the rudder, and unrove the running rigging, for fear she might go to sea of her own accord, and resume her smuggling voyage without the assistance of human agency.