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14S
LETTERS FROM TIIE
and the blue-jcrkined shipmen, all stand solemnly round, with their heads uncovered, the burial-service is read at the head of the dead, and the corse is slowly, and sacredly launched overboard, and sinks standing, and floating, at a certain number of fathoms deep, in the ocean; there to remain, until the sea shall give up her dead. Mariners are contradictory beings; these bibulous hearts of oak would feelingly render any, the most menial, service to the sick; and sometimes would their rough hands dash a tear from their weather-beaten cheeks; and yet would they, perhaps, jest on the body as they were seaming up the corse. In about a week after the first two, and again within a few hours of each other, in the morning, died two more, and were buried in the sea. .A day after, a fifth steerage passenger died also on deck, and followed his four^dead messmates into the overwhelming abysses. Thus, within ten days, died, of this most repelling, and fatal disease, five men, being one half of the steerage passengers; leaving. two others sick. .One that died was a lusty pillar of strength, and portrait of health ; and yet he fell, and -faded, in one day. These sad deaths will quarantine us, for a half month or more, at Tinicum Island. These unhappy men seemed little affected at their fate ; and why was it, that I myself was more affected at the death of the first, than of the last one: when, assuredly, my grief ought to have increased with the increased cause for sorrow. I repeated the 6ublime and solemn burial-service over the dead
SOUTH AND WEST.
§8-
bodies of the two last; as we committed u the bodies ^ to their place, their souls to heaven’s grace, and the rest in God’s own time.” Every packet-ship should isgj^be required to carry a physician, in the sickly sea-son; or the commander to be an apothecary in the knowledge of his medicine-chest. Every commands,,; der ought, also, to read, or cause to be read, on board of his ship, in a chaplain-like manner, the church-Sjk' service, on every sabbath on the occan.
■	We had been in the Gulf above two weeks, wait-ing for the moving of the waters, and the winds; and often spying in vain for the Tortugas, and the pii*. white foam over the dreaded Martyrs’ Reef; when, ^ at last, we gained the straits between the Florida Cape, and the Island of Cuba; nearly in sight of Moro Castle at the Havannah, which lay under the f*; yellow plague. To pass through this Gulf, and round this Cape, demands more of nautical skill, and is ^“fuller of open and lurking perils, than a voyage to Europe. These straits are about twenty leagues Qp' wide. A bark once got over on the Bahama banks, m.by having a nail under her compass. A ship is kept the current of the Gulf by a thermometer ; as there ifS&i.is a difference of temperature between the water and Tfc-'air in and out of the stream. We beat the latitude : as far South as 23° 26': just upon the Tropic of Cancer. When a fresh-water novice, for the first time, crosses the equatorial line, or sometimes the tropics, the ocean boys aspire to become particularly