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146	LXTTERS FUOM THE
winds! 0 for Neptune to give us a shove with his trident; or his Tritons to blow us a blast with their conchs! But I anticipate the time, when steara-balloons, with their elastic radiation of paddles, will wait for neither winds, nor tides. The tripartite recreation of our rich Potosi Spaniard has’lieen, to muse along the quarter-deck under the shadow of his broad yellow vegetable hat; now glancing at the small compass in his watch-seal, now chiming his musical segar-box, and now drawing and poising his stiletto-cane with a spy-glass in it; or to order his habitual lemon-syrup from his Sancho Panza of a servant; and to indulge in his daily siesta. Since wc left the land for the ocean, what with the season, and what with the latitude, we have but little cooled our heat, which has scarcely been mitigated by the shadows of evening. Sol occubuit—nullum frigus sequitw. The Briton and Missouriman, of our cabin-comrades, have daily-buoyed down their bodies by cords from the prow, and bathed in the salt waves. Every one, who sails upon the sea, ought to be skilled to swim. Our jovial FalstafT of a captain told us of three fair sisters, he was sure the two eldest, who could swim like mermaids. They lived near the Schuylkill, in a retired spot, and were accustomed to swim in every summer day. It was a healthy beauty-heightening practice : and one of our gallant passengers would have liked to learn from them. The German had with him two musical instruments; one unnamed, and unopened, in a long black case like an
SOUTH AND WEST.	147
infant coffin; the other a clarionet, with which he could blow the air into any shape he pleased. As :^V; he often applied his moistened lips, I could realize 2co what was meant by liquid sound, as I saw it ooze in dew-drops from the open end of the tube. As he & breathed, and the airs floated over the waters, in £ reverie I could fancy the boisterous ocean to be a calm inland lake, softened by the yellow full-orbed twilight; and our high ship, and hardy crew, to be a 1 gay'pleasure-yatch, graced with a bright bevy of ' &}'■• maidens ; whose fair hair in the breeze would spread S?'V like the moon-beams, as they gleamed up their blue eyes most meltingly, and their songs and their vows fell balmily upon the waters. Anon, at the boat-'>'• swain’s whistle, long and shrill—a fog would creep over the lake, the barge and the maidens would fade from my vision, and I find myself in the middle of the wide sea.
We had not been in the Gulf long, before the
commander found that he had shipped Death among
1^, • ___________________________
p}.- his steerage passengers. The yellow plague was on board. At the moon’s first quarter, and within three (£r hours of each other, two died. When a man dies at sea, a couple of mariners roll up the dead body in a H' sheet, or blanket; and, with their stout steel three-edged marline-needles, seam it tight, so as to shape it to the head and trunk. A plank is laid from the *$•; head of a barrel to the leeward side of the ship, upon which the corpse is extended, having an iron fifty-fety six appended to the feet. Then, while the officers,