proved light and baffling on the passage, and as we drew towards the north, the weather was foggy with drizzling rains. My quarters on deck, under the lee of a bale of cotton, were any thing but comfortable. I often awoke when the watch was called, shivering with cold, and found it difficult, without an unusual quantity of exercise, to recover a tolerable degree of warmth.

I uttered no complaints, but bore this continual exposure, night and day, and other inconveniences, with a philo, sophical spirit, conceiving them to be a part of the compact. If the passage had only been of moderate length, I should, in all likelihood, have reached Boston in good health; but nineteen days had passed away when we sailed through the Vineyard Sound, and anchored in the harbor of Hyannis, on the third of July, 1810.

Some days before we reached Hyannis, I found myself gradually losing strength. I was visited with occasional fits of shivering, succeeded by fever heats. But on the morning of the glorious Fourth, I felt my whole system renovated at the idea of celebrating " Independence Day" on shore. The captain and mate of the Lydia both belonged to Barnstable, where their families resided. They both left the schooner for their homes as soon as the anchor reached the bottom, boldly predicting head winds or calms for at least thirty-six hours, at the end of which time they calculated to rejoin the schooner.

On the morning of the fourth, the crew, to a man, followed the example of our trustworthy officers, and determined to have a jovial time on shore. We left the good schooner Lydia soberly riding at anchor, to take care of herself. There were several other vessels in the harbor, all of which were deserted in the same manner. Not a living animal was to be found in the whole fleet. After passing weeks at sea, the temptation to tread the firm earth, and participate in a Fourth of July frolic, was too strong to be resisted.

Hyannis was then quite a humble village with a profusion of salt works. Farm houses were thinly scattered around, and comfort seemed inscribed on every dwelling. There seemed to be an abundance of people moving about on that day; where they came from was a problem I could not solve. Every one seemed pleased and happy, and, with commendable patriotism, resolved to enjoy Independence Day. The young men were neatly apparelled, and bent on having a joyous time; and the girls-Cape Cod girls, ever renowned for beauty and worth gayly decked out with smiles, and dimples, and ribbons, ready for a Fourth of July frolic, dazzled the eyes of the beholders, and threw a magic charm over the scene.

And a frolic they had; fiddling, dancing, fun, and patriotism was the order of the day. In the evening, however, the entertainments were varied by the delivery of a sermon and other religious exercises in the school-house by a young Baptist clergyman, who subsequently became well known for his praiseworthy and successful efforts to reduce the rates on postage in the United States. This good man accomplished the great work of his life- and died. A simple monument is erected to his memory at Mount Auburn, with no more than these words of inscription:

"BARNABAS BATES,

FATHER OF CHEAP POSTAGE."

Hardly a person visits that consecrated ground who has not reaped enjoyment from the labors of that man's life. And as the simple epitaph meets the eye, and is read in an audible tone, the heart-felt invocation, "Blessings on his memory!" is his oft-repeated elegy.

It was about nine o'clock in the evening when the crew returned to the schooner. After we gained the deck I was seized with an unpleasant sensation. A sudden chill seemed to congeal the blood in my veins; my teeth chat

tered, and my frame shook with alarming violence. After the lapse of about thirty minutes the chills gave place to an attack of fever, which, in an hour or two, also disappeared, leaving me in a weak and wretched condition. This proved to be a case of intermittent fever, or fever and ague, a distressing malady, but little known in New England in modern times, although by no means a stranger to the early settlers. It was fastened upon me with a rough and tenacious grasp, by the damp, foggy, chilly atmosphere in which I had constantly lived for the last fortnight.

Next morning, in good season, the captain and mate were on board. The wind was fair, and we got under weigh― doubled Cape Cod, and arrived alongside the T Wharf in Boston, after a tedious and uncomfortable passage of twenty-two days from Savannah.

I left my home a healthy-looking boy, with buoyant spirits, a bright eye, and features beaming with hope. A year had passed, and I stood on the wharf in Boston, a slender stripling, with a pale and sallow complexion, a frame attenuated by disease, and a spirit oppressed by disappointment. The same day I deposited my chest in a packet bound to Portsmouth, tied up a few trifling articles in a handkerchief, shook hands with the worthy Captain Burgess, his mate and kind-hearted crew, and with fifteen silver dollars in my pocket, wended my way to the stage tavern in Ann Street, and made arrangements for a speedy journey to my home in Rockingham County, New Hampshire.

CHAPTER XI.

EMBARKING FOR BRAZIL.

Ir seemed to be generally conceded that I had got enough of the sea; that after the discomforts I had experienced, and the unpleasant and revolting scenes I had witnessed, I should manifest folly in trying another voy age. My friends took it for granted that in my eyes a ship had lost all her attractions, and that I would henceforth eschew salt water as zealously and devoutly as a thrice-holy monk is wont to eschew the vanities of the world.

Indeed, for a time I reluctantly acknowledged that I had seen enough of a sailor's life; that on trial it did not realize my expectations; that if not a decided humbug, it was amazingly like one. With my health the buoyancy of my spirits departed. Hope and ambition no longer urged me with irresistible power to go forth and visit foreign lands, and traverse unknown seas like a knight errant of old in quest of adventures. While shivering with ague, and thinking of my wretched fare on board the schooner John, and my uncomfortable lodgings during the passage from Savannah, I listened, with patience at least, to the suggestions of my friends about a change of occupation. Arrangements were accordingly made by which I was to bid adieu to the seas forever.

It cost me something to abandon a vocation to which I had looked for years as the stepping-stone to success in life; and as my health and spirits returned, I began to doubt whether I was acting wisely; but having embarked in a new pursuit, I determined to go ahead, and to this determination I unflinchingly adhered, for at least three months,—when I fell in with a distant relation, Captain

Nathaniel Page, of Salem, who was about proceeding on a voyage to the Brazils. After expressing surprise at my course in abandoning the sea, he more than hinted that if I wished a situation before the mast with him, it was at my service.

This was applying the linstock to the priming with a vengeance. My good resolutions vanished like a wreath of vapor before a westerly gale. Those longings which I had endeavored to stifle, returned with more than their original force. In fancy's eye, I saw a marlinspike where Macbeth saw the dagger, and snuffed the fragrance of a tar-bucket in every breeze.

At the expiration of three days after my interview with Captain Page, I took the stage coach and proceeded to Salem. The brig Clarissa was then preparing to take in cargo for Maranham and Para, ports on the north coast of Brazil, — which had just been thrown open to American commerce. The Clarissa was a good-looking, substantial vessel, of about two hundred tons burden, belonging to Jere. L. Page, Abel Peirson, and others, and had recently returned from a successful voyage to Calcutta.

The sight of the brig, and the flurry about the wharves, where several Indiamen were discharging cargoes or making ready for sea, confirmed me in my resolution to try the ocean once more. Indeed I began to be heartily ashamed of having seriously entertained the idea of quietly settling down among "the land-lubbers on shore," and felt that the sooner I retrieved my error the better.

Filled with this idea, I sought Captain Page, and without further consideration, and without daring to consult my friends in New Hampshire, lest they should overwhelm me with remonstrances, I engaged to go in the Clarissa as one of the crew before the mast.

I returned home with all speed, gathered together my few sea-going garments and nautical instruments, again bade adieu to my relations, who gravely shook their heads