Journal of an African Cruiser

Departure-Mother Carey's Chickens-The Gulf stream-Rapid Progress-The French Admiral's Cook-Nautical Musicians-The Sick Man-The Burial at Sea-Arrival at the Canaries-Santa Cruz-Love and Crime-Island of Grand Canary-Troglodytes near Las Palmas.

June 5,1843.-Towed by the steamer Hercules, we go down the harbor of New York, at 7 o'clock A.M. It is the fourth time the ship has moved, since she was launched from the Navy Yard at Portsmouth. Her first experience of the ocean was a rough one; she was caught in a wintry gale from the north-east, dismasted, and towed back into Portsmouth harbor, within three days after her departure. The second move brought us to New York; the third, from the Navy Yard into the North river; and the fourth will probably bring us to an anchorage off Sandy Hook. After a hard winter of four months, in New Hampshire, we go to broil on the coast of Africa, with ice enough in our blood to keep us comfortably cool for six months at least.

At 10 A.M. the steamer cast off, and we anchored inside of Sandy Hook; at 12 Meridian, hoisted the broad pennant of Commodore Perry, and saluted it with thirteen guns. At 3 P.M. the ship gets under way, and with a good breeze, stands out to sea. Our parting letters are confided to the Pilot. That weather-beaten veteran gives you a cordial shake with his broad, hard hand, wishes you a prosperous cruise, and goes over the side. His life is full of greetings and farewells; the grasp of his hand assures the returning mariner that his weary voyage is over; and when the swift pilot boat hauls her wind, and leaves you to go on your course alone, you feel that the last connecting link with home is broken. On our ship's deck, there were perhaps some heart-aches, but no whimpering. Few strain their eyes to catch parting glimpses of the receding highlands; it is only the green ones who do that. The Old Salt seeks more substantial solace in his dinner. It is matter of speculation, moreover, whether much of the misery of parting does not, with those unaccustomed to the sea, originate in the disturbed state of their stomachs.

7.-We are in the Gulf-stream. The temperature of the water is ten degrees above that of the air. Though the ship is deep, being filled with stores, and therefore sailing heavily, we are yet taken along eleven knots by the wind, and two or three more by the current. Swiftly as we fly, however, we are not quite alone upon the waters. Mother Carey's chickens follow us continually, dipping into the white foam of our track, to seize the food which our keel turns up for them out of the ocean depths. Mysterious is the way of this little wanderer over the sea. It is never seen on land; and naturalists have yet to discover where it reposes, and where it hatches its young; unless we adopt the idea of the poets, that it builds its nest upon the turbulent bosom of the deep. It is a sort of nautical sister of the fabled bird of Paradise, which was footless, and never alighted out of the air. Hundreds of miles from shore, in sunshine and in tempest, you may see the Stormy Petrel. Among the unsolvable riddles which nature propounds to mankind, we may reckon the question, Who is Mother Carey, and where does she rear her chickens?

9.-We are out of the Gulf-stream, and the ship is now rolling somewhat less tumultuously than heretofore. For four days, we have been blest with almost too fair a wind. A strong breeze, right aft, has been taking us more than two hundred and forty miles a day on our course. But the incessant and uneasy motion of the ship deprives us of any steady comfort. In spite of all precautions, tables, chairs, and books, have tumbled about in utter confusion, and the monotony is enlivened by the breaking of bottles and crash of crockery. As some consolation, our Log Book shows that we have made more than half of a thousand miles, within the last forty-eight hours. Land travelling, with all the advantages of railroads, can hardly compete with the continual diligence of a ship before a prosperous breeze.

11.-Spoke an American brig from Liverpool, bound for New York. Though the boat was called away, and our letters were ready, it was all at once determined not to board her; and, after asking the captain to report us, we stood on our course again. The newspapers will tell our friends something of our whereabouts; or, at least, that on a certain day, we were encountered at a certain point upon the sea.

13.-Wind still fair, and weather always fine. We have not tacked ship once since leaving Sandy Hook, and are almost ready to quarrel with the continual fair wind. There is nothing else to find fault with, except the performances of our French cook in the wardroom, who came on board just before we left New York, and made us believe that we had obtained a treasure. He told us that he had cooked for a French Admiral. We swore him to secrecy on that point, lest the Commodore should be disposed to engage the services of so distinguished an artist for his own table. But our self-congratulations were not of long continuance. The sugared omelet passed with slight remark. The beefsteak smothered in onions was merely prohibited in future. But when, on the second day, the potatoes were served with mashed lemon-peel, the general discontent burst forth; and we scolded till we laughed again at the dilemma in which we found ourselves. Next to being without food, is the calamity of being subjected, in the middle of the Atlantic, to the diabolical arts of the French Admiral's cook. At sea, the arrangements of the table are of far more importance than on shore. There are so few incidents, that one's dinner becomes, what Dr. Johnson affirmed it always to be, the affair of which a man thinks oftenest in the course of the day.

16.-All day, the wind has been ahead, and very light. This evening, a dead calm is upon the sea; but the sky is cloudless, and the air pure and soft. All the well are enjoying the fine weather. The commodore and captain walk the poop-deck; the other officers, except the lieutenant and young gentlemen of the watch, are smoking on the forecastle, or promenading the quarter-deck. A dozen steady old salts are rolling along the gangways; and the men are clustered in knots between the guns, talking, laughing, or listening to the yarns of their comrades-an amusement to which sailors are as much addicted as the Sultan in the Arabian Nights. But music is the order of the evening. Though a band is not allowed to a ship of our class, there are always good musicians to be found among the reckless and jolly fellows composing a man-of-war's crew. A big landsman from Utica, and a dare-devil topman from Cape Cod, are the leading vocalists; Symmes, the ship's cook, plays an excellent violin; and the commodore's steward is not to be surpassed upon the tambourine. A little black fellow, whose sobriquet is Othello, manages the castanets, and there is a tolerable flute played by one of the afterguard. The concerts usually commence with sentimental songs, such as "Home, sweet Home," and the Canadian Boat Song: but the comic always carries off the palm; "Jim along Josey," "Lucy Long," "Old Dan Tucker," and a hundred others of the same character, are listened to delightedly by the crowd of men and boys collected round the fore-hatch, and always ready to join in the choruses. Thus a sound of mirth floats far and wide over the twilight sea, and would seem to indicate that all goes well among us.

But the delicious atmosphere, and the amusements of the ship, bring not joy to all on board. There are sick men swinging uneasily in their hammocks; and one poor fellow, whose fever threatens to terminate fatally, tosses painfully in his cot. His messmates gently bathe his hot brow, and, watching every movement, nurse him as tenderly as a woman. Strange, that the rude heart of a sailor should be found to possess such tenderness as we seldom ask or find, in those of our own sex, on land! There, we leave the gentler humanities of life to woman; here, we are compelled to imitate her characteristics, as well as our sterner nature will permit.

22.-The sick man died last night, and was buried to-day. His history was revealed to no one. Where was his home, or whether he has left friends to mourn his death, are alike unknown. Dying, he kept his own counsel, and was content to vanish out of life, even as a speck of foam melts back into the ocean. At 11 A.M., for the first time, in a cruise likely to be fatal to many on board, the boatswain piped "all hands to bury the dead!" The sailor's corpse, covered with the union of his country's flag, was placed in the gangway. Two hundred and fifty officers and men stood around, uncovered, and reverently listened to the beautiful and solemn burial service, as it was read by one of the officers. The body was committed to the deep, while the ship dashed onward, and had left the grave far behind, even before the last words of the service were uttered. The boatswain "piped down," and all returned to their duties sadly, and with thoughtful countenances.

23.-At 4 A.M., the island of Palma and the Peak of Teneriffe are in full sight, though the lofty summit of the mountain is one hundred miles distant.

24.-At 5 A.M., anchored at Santa Cruz, capital of the island of Teneriffe. The health-officer informed us that we must ride out a quarantine of eight days. A fine precaution, considering that we are direct from New York! After breakfast, I went to the mole, to see the Consular Agent, on duty. While waiting in our boat, we were stared at by thirty or forty loafers (a Yankee phrase, but strictly applicable to these foreign vagabonds), of the most wretched kind. Some were dressed in coarse shirts and trowsers, and some had only one of these habiliments. None interested me, except a dirty, swarthy boy, with most brilliant black eyes, who lay flat on his stomach, and gazed at us in silence. His elf-like glance sparkles brightly in my memory.

One of the seamen in our boat spoke to the persons on shore in Spanish. I inquired whether that were his mother-tongue, and learned that he was a native of Mahon. On questioning him further, I ascertained that he was concerned in a tragedy of which I had often heard, while on the Mediterranean station, two or three years ago. A beautiful girl of sixteen, of highly respectable family, fell in love with a young man, her inferior in social rank, though of reputable standing. The affair was kept secret between them. At length, the lover became jealous, and, one evening, called his mistress out of her father's house, and stabbed her five or six times. She died instantly, and her murderer fled. It was believed in Mahon that he was drowned by falling overboard from the vessel in which he escaped. Nevertheless, that murderer was the man with whom I was speaking in the boat, now bearing another name, and a common sailor of our ship. He told me his real name; and I heard, afterwards, that, when drunk, he had confessed the murder to one of his messmates.

This incident illustrates what I have often thought, that the private history of a man-of-war's crew, if truly told, would be full of high romance, varied with stirring incident, and too often darkened with, deep and deadly crime. Many go to sea with the old Robinson Crusoe spirit, seeking adventure for its own sake; many, to escape the punishment of guilt, which has made them outlaws of the land; some, to drown the memory of slighted love; while others flee from the wreck of their broken fortunes ashore, to hazard another shipwreck on the deep. The jacket of the common sailor often covers a figure that has walked Broadway in a fashionable coat. An officer sometimes sees his old school-fellow and playmate taken to the gangway and flogged. Many a blackguard on board has been bred in luxury; and many a good seaman has been a slaver and a pirate. It is well for the ship's company, that the sins of individuals do not, as in the days of Jonas, stir up tempests that threaten the destruction of the whole.

The island of Grand Canary is one of the most interesting of the group at which we have now arrived. The population of its capital, the city of Las Palmas, is variously estimated at from nine thousand inhabitants, to twice that number. The streets, however, have none of the bustle and animation that would enliven an American town, of similar size. Around the city there is an aspect of great fertility; fields of corn and grain, palm-trees, and vineyards, occupy the valleys among the hills, and extend along the shores, twining a glad green wreath about the circuit of the island. The vines of Canary produce a wine which, two or three centuries ago, was held in higher estimation than at present, and is supposed by some to have been the veritable "sack" that so continually moistened the throat of Falstaff. The very name of Canary is a cheerful one, associated as it is with the idea of bounteous vineyards, and of those little golden birds that make music all over the world.

The high hills that surround the city of Las Palmas are composed of soft stone, the yielding quality of which has caused these cliffs to be converted to a very singular purpose. The poorer people, who can find no shelter above ground, burrow into the sides of the hill, and thus form caves for permanent habitation, where they dwell like swallows in a sand-bank. Judging from the number of these excavations, the mouths of which appear on the hill-sides, there cannot be less than a thousand persons living in the manner here described. Not only the destitute inhabitants of Grand Canary, but vagabonds from Teneriffe and the other islands, creep thus into the heart of the rock; and children play about the entrances of the caverns as merrily as at a cottage-door: while, in the gloom of the interior, you catch a glimpse of household furniture, and women engaged in domestic avocations. It is like discovering a world within the world.

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