What Greatly Added To The Picturesqueness Of The Bay At This Time Was
The Condemned Hull Of A Large Ship, Which, At The Farther End Of The
Harbour, Lay Bilged Upon The Beach, Its Stern Settled Low In The
Water, And The Other End High And Dry.
From where we lay, the trees
behind seemed to lock their leafy boughs over its bowsprit; which,
from its position, looked nearly upright.
She was an American whaler, a very old craft. Having sprung a leak at
sea, she had made all sail for the island, to heave down for repairs.
Found utterly unseaworthy, however, her oil was taken out and sent
home in another vessel; the hull was then stripped and sold for a
trifle.
Before leaving Tahiti, I had the curiosity to go over this poor old
ship, thus stranded on a strange shore. What were my emotions, when I
saw upon her stern the name of a small town on the river Hudson! She
was from the noble stream on whose banks I was born; in whose waters
I had a hundred times bathed. In an instant, palm-trees and
elms - canoes and skiffs - church spires and bamboos - all mingled in one
vision of the present and the past.
But we must not leave little Jule.
At last the wishes of many were gratified; and like an aeronaut's
grapnel, her rusty little anchor was caught in the coral groves at
the bottom of Papeetee Bay. This must have been more than forty days
after leaving the Marquesas.
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