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Sarmiento intended to steer W.S.W. until he reached the tropic of Capricorn,* and this direction was kept until the 28th of November. In the charts of the period a port or bay was marked on the coast of Java-Major in that latitude.
Captain Owen granted the ship's company permission to perform the customary ceremony of shaving and ducking all those who had not previously passed the tropic. Whenever a ship is intended to enter the southern hemisphere, this marine exhibition is not performed until she reaches the equinoctial line.
And yet these commercial peoples barred their gates to him! For a number of days he took his place in the shade of a davited boat, and now and again he read from a quaint book the Analects of Confucius. We sailed on Wednesday, and on Sunday made the first tropic, nearly twenty-three and a half degrees above the line.
On the 11th July they had sight of Madeira, and on the 13th they passed through between Teneriff and Grand Canary, with a stiff breeze at N.N.E. and a swift current. The 15th they passed the tropic of Cancer; and the 20th in the morning fell in with the north side of Cape de Verd.
We lay on our arms that night and as we were drenched with sweat, and had no blankets save a few we took from the dead Spaniards, we found even the tropic night chilly before morning came.
When they were seasick they deeply and loudly lamented leaving their home, but on recovery they soon became "as firmly attached to us as if they had been born amongst us." Sailing on 25th February, they crossed the tropic on 27th March, some 9 degrees further west than Cook wished to have done, and had seen nothing of importance.
On Sundays, under the tropic sun or in the ash-colored light of the northern heavens, the boatswain would read the Bible. The men would listen thoughtfully with uncovered heads. The women had dressed themselves in black with lace headdress and mittened hands. He went to Newfoundland to load codfish. There is where the warm current from the Gulf of Mexico meets that from the Poles.
Oft one man's act has deflected the stream of the centuries. Full oft a single word has been like a switch that turns a train from the route running toward the frozen North, to a track leading into the tropic South. Not seldom has a youth been turned from the way of integrity by the influence of a single friend. Endowed as man is, the weight of his being effects the most astonishing results.
This current bears the tropic grape into the high latitudes, toward the coasts of Norway and France; and it is not the Gulf-stream, as some mariners think, which accumulates the Fucus to the south of the Azores. The causes that unroot these weeds at depths where it is generally thought the sea is but slightly agitated, are not sufficiently known.
"The heaven and the heaven of heavens are the Lord's; the whole earth hath he given to the children of men;" deducing therefrom craftily, to the exceeding pleasure of his hearers, the iniquity of the Spaniards in dispossessing the Indians, and in arrogating to themselves the sovereignty of the tropic seas; the vanity of the Pope of Rome in pretending to bestow on them the new countries of America; and the justice, valor, and glory of Mr.
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