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Updated: June 28, 2025
The easterly wind prevails as far as 10° or 12° S., and the westerly as far as 6° or 8°; in the intermediate space the winds are variable, and the air, I believe, always unwholesome; it certainly aggravated the diseases which we brought with us from Batavia, and particularly the flux, which was not in the least degree checked by any medicine, so that whoever was seized with it considered himself as a dead man; but we had no sooner got into the trade-wind, than we began to feel its salutary effects: We buried indeed several of our people afterwards, but they were such as had been taken on board in a state so low and feeble that there was scarcely a possibility of their recovery.
Chinatown by a thousand eccentricities drew and held me; I could never have enough of its ambiguous, interracial atmosphere, as of a vitalised museum; never wonder enough at its outlandish, necromantic-looking vegetables set forth to sell in commonplace American shop-windows, its temple doors open and the scent of the joss-stick streaming forth on the American air, its kites of Oriental fashion hanging fouled in Western telegraph-wires, its flights of paper prayers which the trade-wind hunts and dissipates along Western gutters.
In 1812 the ashes which it threw out were so great in quantity, and projected to so vast a height, that they were carried to a distance of two hundred miles in the teeth of the trade-wind. From Mount Pelee, in Martinique, there was an eruption in August 1851. La Soufriere, the volcano in Guadaloupe, is said to have been cleft in twain during an earthquake.
By midnight we were off Morant Point, from which we took our departure; and in another hour were tearing along under topgallant-sails, upon a taut bowline, and looking well up for the Island of Grenada, under the influence of a strong trade-wind.
The voyage of thirty days was a wild and stormy one, and they were obliged to beat about the Hawaiian Islands for some days before they could enter, eating up the last of their food twenty-four hours before arrival, but finally the Silver Ship, flying like a bird before a spanking trade-wind, ran into port around the bold point of Diamond Head.
Ah, captain, how often have we sailed those voyages together! What grand headway we made as we scoured the tropics in the heel of the trade-wind, our ship threading archipelagoes whose virgin forests stared at us in wonder, all their strange flowers opening toward us, seeking to allure us and put us to sleep with their dangerous perfumes.
The captain having been at Tonquin, was, in his return to England, driven northeastward, to the latitude of 44 degrees, and of longitude 143. But meeting a trade-wind two days after I came on board him, we sailed southward a long time, and, coasting New Holland, kept our course west-south-west, and then south-south-west, till we doubled the Cape of Good Hope.
The blank sea itself grew desirable under such skies; and wherever the trade-wind blows, I know no better country than a schooner's deck. But for the tugging anxiety as to the journey's end, the journey itself must thus have counted for the best of holidays.
We were cruising at this time in the Windward Channel, the squadron being at the moment of the discovery about midway between Points Malano and Perle. We were working to windward under double-reefed topsails on the starboard tack, the trade-wind blowing fresh at about east-nor'- east.
The north-east trade-wind, which began blowing during the night, was now carrying the stranger steadily along before it. Mr Foley had lent Gerald his glass. "Why, sir," he exclaimed, as he was looking through it "`It never rains but it pours' there is another craft of the same rig as the first, under all sail. It appears to me that she is chasing the headmost one."
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