The next day, about three P. M., passed a large corvette-built
ship, close upon the wind, with royals and skysails set fore
and aft, under English colors.
She was standing south-by-east,
probably bound round Cape Horn. She had men in her tops, and black
mast-heads; heavily sparred, with sails cut to a t, and other marks
of a man-of-war. She sailed well, and presented a fine appearance;
the proud, aristocratic-looking banner of St. George, the cross in
a blood-red field, waving from the mizen. We probably were as fine
a sight, with our studding-sails spread far out beyond the ship
on either side, and rising in a pyramid to royal studding-sails
and sky-sails, burying the hull in canvas, and looking like what
the whale-men on the Banks, under their stump top-gallant masts,
call "a Cape Horn-er under a cloud of sail."
Friday, August 12th. At daylight made the island of Trinidad,
situated in lat. 20° 28' S., long. 29° 08' W. At twelve M.,
it bore N. W. 1/2 N., distant twenty-seven miles. It was a
beautiful day, the sea hardly ruffled by the light trades,
and the island looking like a small blue mound rising from
a field of glass.
Such a fair and peaceful-looking spot is said to have been, for a
long time, the resort of a band of pirates, who ravaged the tropical
seas.
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