bottle was to go into the ship's boiler to make our porridge; and from this, as we got into the warm latitudes, sprang the second mutiny. Many of the passengers, instead of depositing their allowance of water in the breakfast-kettle, reserved it for drinking, but when the porridge was dealing out, they also came in for their share thus it came to pass that for several mornings there was not enough made to supply the several messes. I soon found out the cause, and stated the difficulty to the captain, who authorised me to stand by the kettle to see that none received any of the porridge, but only those who had put in their bottles of water. This order I faithfully executed during the remainder of our passage, and finally my firmness and equity in the trust gained me the goodwill of all on board. -- -we Among the passengers, were, of course, both odd and curious characters; and as the revolutionary fever was then raging on sea and land, our ship was a type of the world;had heads so hot, that all the waters of the Atlantic could not have cooled them; we had also men of diverse religions, and of no religion; and it was not uncommon when the wind was fair, and the weather fine, to see an antiburgher minister, one of whom was on board, holding forth on the quarter-deck, and singing the old version of the psalms of David, and at the same time a batch of eight or ten universalists, chaunting the Winchester hymns on the forecastle. At last their controversies grew to such a pitch, that the captain was obliged to put a stop to their strivings, by declaring the Presbyterian religion to be the established religion of his ship. The courteous reader will see by what has been related, that what with the business I had in hand by day, and what with the oppression of the dreadful Celt by night, I had no time to philosophise on the wonders of the deep. I trust he will likewise see a better thing-and that is, the extraordinary manner in which I was made an instrument to prevent misrule and mutiny in the ship, and to minister to the comfort of all on board. CHAPTER VI. The world was all before them where to choose I HAVE now to speak of the greatest event in my eventful history, being no less than of my arrival in New York, and of the great things which were done for me on that occasion. Hitherto, saving in the small matters rehearsed in the foregoing pages, I may say I had been but as a bird in the nest. For nearly thirteen years I had sat on my hunkers in the puddock hair under the wing of a kind parent, eating the worms and crumbs that Providence gave him, in the wherewithal with which he fed me. And though I was at last strengthened to an ability that enabled me to jump out upon the household boughs and to pick and carol in companionship, who ever thought that my wings were feathered for such an eagle's flight as a sweep across the wide Atlantic ? Here were my brother and I in a new world, two inexperienced young men, with scarcely a crown remaining of all the pound which our loving father had bestowed upon us, with the tear in his eye, and his blessing. It is true, like Adam and Eve, when driven out of the gardens of Eden, we had Providence for our guide, as that solemn sounding gong of the Gospel, the mighty John Milton, bears testimony; but we were worse off, for they had the world all before them where to choose: we had no choice. I say we scarcely had a crown remaining; we had but three shillings and sixpence, for with all our frugality, and notwithstanding our well-plenished ark, we had several items of necessaries to buy from the ship's steward, by which our pound was cast into a consumption. But an encouraging spirit inspired our bosoms, and in our fortunes we feared none ill. It was on the 16th of June, Anno Domini 1794, about ten o'clock, a. m. that our ship came to anchor opposite to the city. In those days New York cut but a humelt* appearance from the water. The only steeples tall enough to be seen to any advantage, were those of the Trinity church, St. George's, and the new Dutch church fronting on Liberty, Nassau and Cedar streets. The stores were mean, temporary timber tabernacles, compared with those Tower-of-Babel warehouses which now surpass the warehouses of Tarshish and of Tyre, and lift their lofty foreheads, in the pride of prosperity, over the tributary fleets that pamper them with treasures from the uttermost ends of the earth. The anchor was scarcely cast into the water when the vessel was surrounded with boats, and I believe every passenger but myself went on shore-my brother went too, and, for fear of accidents, took all that was left of our cargo of specie with him. If ever I felt the chill of the shadow of the clouds of fate fall upon my spirit, it was at the moment when he stepped over the gunwale down into the boat, and yet • Want of horns. |