Equatorial America. Ballou Maturin Murray
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the sea where the depth is a thousand fathoms, liable at any moment to be changed into raging billows by an angry storm! How minute the vitality of this graceful atom, a creature whose existence is perhaps for only a single day; yet how grand and limitless the system of life and creation of which it is so humble a representative! Sailors call these frail marine creatures Portuguese men-of-war. Possessing some singular facility for doing so, if they are disturbed, they quickly furl their sails and sink below the surface of the buoyant waves into deep water, the home of the octopus, the squid, and the voracious shark. Did they, one is led to query, navigate these seas after this fashion before the Northmen came across the ocean, and before Columbus landed at San Salvador? At night the glory of the southern hemisphere, as revealed in new constellations and brighter stars brought into view, was observed with keenest interest, – "Everlasting Night, with her star diadems, with her silence, and her verities." The phosphorescence of the sea, with its scintillations of brilliant light, its ripples of liquid fire, the crest of each wave a flaming cascade, was a charming phenomenon one never tired of watching. If it be the combination of millions and billions of animalculæ which thus illumines the waters, then these infinitesimal creatures are the fireflies of the ocean, as the cucuios, that fairy torch-bearer, is of the land. Gliding on the magic mirror of the South Atlantic, in which the combined glory of the sky was reflected with singular clearness, it seemed as though we were sailing over a starry world below.
While observing the moon in its beautiful series of changes, lighting our way by its chaste effulgence night after night, it was difficult to realize that it shines entirely by the light which it borrows from the sun; but it was easy to believe the simpler fact, that of all the countless hosts of the celestial bodies, she is our nearest neighbor. "An eighteen-foot telescope reveals to the human eye over forty million stars," said Captain Baker, as we stood together gazing at the luminous heavens. "And if we entertain the generally accepted idea," he continued, "we must believe that each one of that enormous aggregate of stars is the centre of a solar system similar to our own." The known facts relating to the stars, like stellar distances, are almost incomprehensible.
One cannot but realize that there is always a certain amount of sentiment wasted on the constellation known as the Southern Cross by passengers bound to the lands and seas over which it hangs. Orion or the Pleiades, either of them, is infinitely superior in point of brilliancy, symmetry, and individuality. A lively imagination is necessary to endow this irregular cluster of stars with any real resemblance to the Christian emblem for which it is named. It serves the navigator in the southern hemisphere, in part, the same purpose which the north star does in our portion of the globe, and there our own respect for it as a constellation ends. Much poetic talent has been expended for ages to idealize the Southern Cross, which is, alas! no cross at all. We have seen a person unfamiliar with the locality of this constellation strive long and patiently, but in vain, to find it. It should be remembered that two prominent stars in Centaurus point directly to it. The one furthest from the so called cross is held to be the fixed star nearest to the earth, but its distance from us is twenty thousand times farther than that of the sun.
We have never yet met a person, looking upon this cluster of the heavens for the first time, who did not frankly express his disappointment. Anticipation and fruition are oftenest at antipodes.
The graceful marine birds which follow the ship, day after day, darting hither and thither with arrowy swiftness, lured by the occasional refuse thrown from on board, would be seriously missed were they to leave us. Watching their aerial movements and untiring power of wing, while listening to their sharp complaining cries, is a source of constant amusement. Even rough weather and a raging sea, if not accompanied by too serious a storm, is sometimes welcome, serving to awaken the ship from its dull propriety, and to put officers, crew, and passengers upon their mettle. To speak a strange vessel at sea is always interesting. If it is a steamer, a long, black wake of smoke hanging among the clouds at the horizon betrays her proximity long before the hull is sighted. All eyes are on the watch until she comes clearly within the line of vision, gradually increasing in size and distinctness of outline, until presently the spars and rigging are minutely delineated. Then speculation is rife as to whence she comes and where she is going. By and by the two ships approach so near that signal flags can be read, and the captains talk with each other, exchanging names, whither bound, and so on. Then each commander dips his flag in compliment to the other, and the ships rapidly separate. All of this is commonplace enough, but serves to while away an hour, and insures a report of our progress and safety at the date of meeting, when the stranger reaches his port of destination.
We have spoken of the pleasure experienced at sea in watching intelligently the various phases of the moon. The subject is a prolific one; a whole chapter might be written upon it.
It is perhaps hardly realized by the average landsman, and indeed by few who constantly cross the ocean, with their thoughts and interests absorbed by the many attractive novelties of the ocean, how important a part this great luminary plays in the navigation of a ship. It is to the intelligent and observant mariner the never-failing watch of the sky, the stars performing the part of hands to designate the proper figure upon the dial. If there is occasion to doubt the correctness of his chronometer, the captain of the ship can verify its figures or correct them by this planet. Every minute that the chronometer is wrong, assuming that it be so, may put him fifteen miles out of his reckoning, which, under some circumstances, might prove to be a fatal error, even leading to the loss of his ship and all on board. To find his precise location upon the ocean, the navigator requires both Greenwich time and local meridian time, the latter obtained by the sun on shipboard, exactly at midday. To get Greenwich time by lunar observation, the captain, for example, finds that the moon is three degrees from the star Regulus. By referring to his nautical almanac he sees recorded there the Greenwich time at which the moon was three degrees from that particular star. He then compares his chronometer with these figures, and either confirms or corrects its indication. It is interesting to the traveler to observe and understand these important resources, which science has brought to bear in perfecting his safety on the ocean, promoting the interests of commerce, and in aid of correct navigation. The experienced captain of a ship now lays his course as surely by compass, after satisfying himself by these various means of his exact position, as though the point of his destination was straight before him all the while, and visible from the pilot house.
How indescribable is the grandeur of these serene nights on the ocean, fanned by the somnolent trade winds; a little lonely, perhaps, but so blessed with the hallowed benediction of the moonlight, so gorgeously decorated by the glittering images of the studded heavens, so sweet and pure and fragrant is the breath of the sleeping wind! If one listens intently, there seems to come to the senses a whispering of the waves, as though the sea in confidence would tell its secrets to a willing ear.
The ship heads almost due south after leaving Barbadoes, when her destination is, as in our case, Pará, twelve hundred miles away. On this course we encounter the equatorial current, which runs northward at a rate of two miles in an hour, and at some points reaches a much higher rate of speed.
As eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, so eternal scrubbing is the price of cleanliness on shipboard. The deck hands are at it from five o'clock in the morning until sunset. Our good ship looks as if she had just come out of dock. Last night's gale, which in its angry turmoil tossed us about so recklessly, covered her with a saline, sticky deposit; but with the rising of the sun all this disappears as if by magic. The many brass mountings shine with dazzling lustre, and the white paint contrasts with the well-tarred cordage which forms the standing rigging.
While the ship pursues her course through the far-reaching ocean, let us sketch in outline the general characteristics of South America, whither we are bound.
It is a country containing twice the area, though not quite one half the amount of population, of the United States, a land which, though now presenting nearly all phases of civilization, was four centuries ago mostly inhabited by nomadic tribes of savages, who knew nothing of the horse, the ox, or the sheep, which to-day form so great and important a source of its wealth, and where wheat, its prevailing staple, was also unknown. It is a land overflowing with native riches, which possesses an unlimited capacity of production, and whose large and increasing population requires just such domestic supplies as we of the north can profitably furnish. The important treaty of reciprocity, so lately arranged between the