The Night Before The Vessels Were Ready To Sail, All The
Europeans United And Had An Entertainment At The Rosa's Hide-House,
And We Had Songs Of Every Nation And Tongue.
A German gave us
"Och!
Mein lieber Augustin!" the three Frenchmen roared through the
Marseilles Hymn; the English and Scotchmen gave us "Rule Britannia,"
and "Wha'll be King but Charlie?" the Italians and Spaniards screamed
through some national affairs, for which I was none the wiser;
and we three Yankees made an attempt at the "Star-spangled Banner."
After these national tributes had been paid, the Austrian gave us
a very pretty little love-song, and the Frenchmen sang a spirited
thing called "Sentinelle! O prenez garde a vous!" and then
followed the melange which might have been expected. When I
left them, the aguardiente and annisou was pretty well in their
heads, and they were all singing and talking at once, and their
peculiar national oaths were getting as plenty as pronouns.
The next day, the two vessels got under weigh for the windward,
and left us in quiet possession of the beach. Our numbers were
somewhat enlarged by the opening of the new houses, and the society
of the beach a little changed. In charge of the Catalina's house,
was an old Scotchman, who, like most of his countrymen, had a pretty
good education, and, like many of them, was rather pragmatical,
and had a ludicrously solemn conceit. He employed his time in
taking care of his pigs, chickens, turkeys, dogs, etc., and in
smoking his long pipe. Everything was as neat as a pin in the
house, and he was as regular in his hours as a chronometer, but as
he kept very much by himself, was not a great addition to our
society. He hardly spent a cent all the time he was on the beach,
and the others said he was no shipmate. He had been a petty officer
on board the British frigate Dublin, Capt. Lord James Townshend,
and had great ideas of his own importance. The man in charge
of the Rosa's house was an Austrian by birth, but spoke, read,
and wrote four languages with ease and correctness. German was his
native tongue, but being born near the borders of Italy, and having
sailed out of Genoa, the Italian was almost as familiar to him as
his own language. He was six years on board of an English man-of-war,
where he learned to speak our language with ease, and also to read
and write it. He had been several years in Spanish vessels,
and had acquired that language so well, that he could read any
books in it. He was between forty and fifty years of age, and was
a singular mixture of the man-of-war's-man and Puritan. He talked
a great deal about propriety and steadiness, and gave good advice
to the youngsters and Kanakas, but seldom went up to the town,
without coming down "three sheets in the wind." One holyday, he
and old Robert (the Scotchman from the Catalina) went up to the
town, and got so cozy, talking over old stories and giving one
another good advice, that they came down double-backed, on a horse,
and both rolled off into the sand as soon as the horse stopped.
This put an end to their pretensions, and they never heard the last
of it from the rest of the men.
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