"You'd Better Wait Till You Get Round Cape Horn," Says An Old
Croaker.
"Yes," says another, "you may see Boston, but you've got to
'smell hell' before that good day."
Rumors also of what had been said in the cabin, as usual, found
their way forward. The steward had heard the captain say something
about the straits of Magellan, and the man at the wheel fancied
he had heard him tell the "passenger" that, if he found the wind
ahead and the weather very bad off the Cape, he should stick her
off for New Holland, and come home round the Cape of Good Hope.
This passenger - the first and only one we had had, except to go
from port to port, on the coast, was no one else than a gentleman
whom I had known in my better days; and the last person I should
have expected to have seen on the coast of California - Professor
N - - -, of Cambridge. I had left him quietly seated in the chair
of Botany and Ornithology, in Harvard University; and the next I
saw of him, was strolling about San Diego beach, in a sailor's
pea-jacket, with a wide straw hat, and barefooted, with his
trowsers roiled up to his knees, picking up stones and shells.
He had travelled overland to the North-west Coast, and come down
in a small vessel to Monterey. There he learned that there was a
ship at the leeward, about to sail for Boston; and, taking passage
in the Pilgrim, which was then at Monterey, he came slowly down,
visiting the intermediate ports, and examining the trees, plants,
earths, birds, etc., and joined us at San Diego shortly before
we sailed.
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