The Polynesian. [volume], December 04, 1841, Page 102, Image 2

About The Polynesian. [volume] (Honolulu (Oahu), Hawaii) 1840-1841

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102
ami no'.v swerving from side to fide with
the motion, till ono loses his center of
gravity and pitches against something or
somehodv, at which he routes a little and
casting a stupid bewildered look round j
him drops oifuurain. Suddenly a severe,
jolt of the coach brings ninn to his senses,!
one rnhs head and another his eyes, and J
some profiting by this gentle hint, keep j
their eyes open and are in turn amused:
by the evolutions of the others, who sleep, I
bob, twist and jolt about in spite of the
road and every other obstacle.
IlLdit "ladlv did I hail once more the
s r 1 1 1 of the sea, which, as we approached j
the city lay spread before us. in all its
calm beauty and illiinilnhle extent. Vc
rode along the beach in siuht of the fa-
inous castle of San Juan d'Ulloa. 1 had j
never been absent from the sea side for j
so long a period before, and had really
pined for a sight of its "blue bosomed
waters."
Vera Cruz is a fine looking city, and I
was very agreeably disappointed in itsap-i
pearanee. 1 he streets are clean, and the
buildings have a very neat look, being all
whitewashed. One could hardly realize
that this city could be the scene of so
much misery as is caused by the pestilence
that walketh at noon-day, the terrible
"Vomito prieto"; which at times has al
most depopulated it. This change has
been effected by the present (lovernor,
who is a man of great energy, and who
has caused the streets, and even the inte
rior of the houses to be cleaned and kept
in good order, and thus many causes of
pestilence have been removed. The prin
cipal hotel is kept by a Scotchman and is
well conducted and supported. Wc
had waited till the day before the packet
was to sail, as wc had been strongly ad
vised not to remain an hour in the city of
Vera Cruz. What was our disappoint
ment therefore, when upon waiting upon
the Agents of the N. Y. Packet, we learn
ed that the packet was to be detained till
the arrival of the Mexican Commissioners
who were appointed to settle the U. S.
claims. We were almost in despair at
this intelligence, especially as we under
stood that the Commissioners were wait
ing for funds, which as the Mexican ex
chequer is very low there was no knowing
when they would get them. Our only
consolation was, that the city was not
very sickly, although it was the sickly
season. Wc remained in this state of
anxiety for a week, every day expecting
that some ol us would be taken lovn
with the vomito pricto, when to our great
joy the Commissioners arrived, and the
next day we embarked on board the
barque Una for New York. As we pass
ed the famed castle of San Juan d'Ulloa,
wc, (or the Commissioners,) received a
salute from her batteries, and as the city
disappeared from our view, wc bade adieu
to Mexico without a sigh, and our hearts
began to beat high with the prospect of at
last reaching home. After a passage of
twenty one days we arrived at X. York,
and our feelings at once more setting foot
on our native land, may be imagined.
Our fatigues and our dangers were all
over, and wc had the satisfaction of rc
llecting that by our short cut, wc had
been several days longer than if we had
taken the usual route round Cape Horn.
However, we were here at last, after va
rious adventures, some amusing, others
vexatious, all of which will cause us many
agreeable reminiscences of our Tour
Across Mexico.
a k uuvrr. i).
THE POLYNESIA N.
December
VOYACii: AIIOUM) tiii: WOUI.l).
Hardy has it been our lot to meet with
so rich a treat as we have received in
the pages of a late publication, enti
tled " The Flag Ship, or a Voyage around
the World in the U: S. Frigate Columbia,
Hy the Uev. Fitch W.Taylor, Chaplain
to the Squadron." Three years tiuee,
Dr. Huschcnbergcr gave us an octavo
with similar title, containing sketches of
most of the places mentioned in the vol
ume under consideration, and his descrip
tions were very graphic, and we were as
sured marvellously faithful, but J)r. R. fell
far short of the style in which the same
objects are set forth bv Mr Tavlor. The
first contented himself with placing before
us in plain Knglish, a rigidly drawn pic
ture of the scenery, or putting us at once
among a crowd of natives, and with mak
ing them exhibit every custom or trait
which would inform us of their character.;
but this was all. Mr Tavlor, leaving this
lull routine, has at once struck out a
course brilliant as it is original. Wrapt
in his pages, the reader is for a time spir
itualized. " Above 1 1 i ii l spans the einpe
ryal vault," around him " the angry surge
raises its rancorous voice," or " Nature
spreads her ever-verdant carpet," and he
breathes nothing but " the balmy ether "
or " the mildest zephyr that ever soothed
a summer's eve." The work opens with
a detail of the feelings at leaving home of
the author and one of his messmates,
with whom he was walking with some
rapidity at the edge of the evening" and
judging from their perusal, they must have
been very severe. Our imagination is
defective which prevents us from doing
justice to a beautiful specimen of Delta
Cruscanism addressed to Mrs It. which
the author, unwilling to trust to the pen
ny papers in which it has appeared, has
very properly placed it here for preserva
tion. We give the first verse :
" Lady, calmly rides our hark
On the green wav es of the hay,
ut like a charger soon will take
Her fleet and lonely way.
Proudly waves her pennant now
From main-top to the breeze;
Ami soon in gractfid cmvc she 11 bow,
And course for Indian seas."
Wc admire the ingenuity of converting
a river into a bay in the second line, and
the fancy of waving a pennant from the
main top. The figure too of a ship like a
charger, bowing in graceful curve, strikes
us forcibly, but our taste is at fault, and
we cannot see " the beauty of the witch
ing calm " nor can our car discover the
rhyme between " melody " and " tear
fully " in another verse.
Not satisfied with giving what things
of note the countries visited aflbrd, our
author has freely drawn upon " the com
modore, the first lieutenant and myself,"
and indeed all his messmates bear their
part in our instructions. Hear the fol
lowing, which, standing wholly uncon
nected as it docs, I quote in full : " I tell
you what," says Lieut. W. (the subject
of shooting the aborigines of our land be
ing under discussion) " if you would kill
an Indian, you must proceed somewhat
after the manner of cooking a dolphin."
" How is that?" " Why, catch him first."
How original and profound, and how com
prehensive he shows the chaplain's re
searches to have been, when killing In
dians interested him so much. In these
details, see how truly his messmates are
clothed in their proper character and lan
guage. " How is it with you, Doctor?"
I asked as the fleet surgeon joined our
promenade, " Do you find that the briny
mist washes away your soft musings of
home ami wife, and little ones ?" " Ah,
sir, returned the surgeon, " I find it like
a mordant of the chemist and dyer, one
ingredient of which is salt, and which they
use to fix indelibly their colors." How
true to life ! Another writer would have
put some high flown incompatible phrase
into the doctor's mouth, but here we have
him true to nature, redolent in Drugs and
Dyestufls. The apostrophe to music is
enchanting, and verges on the sublimity
of Transcendentalism, where ho tells us
how " the moist eve perfumed the balmy
air," and how " for me the guitar was
struck was struck for me" and how
" when farther oil' revel music hath awa
kened, I have leaned upon my elbow, and
gazed from the lattice of my country
home, nml contemplated the deep shade
beneath the fruit trees and the forest clus
ters, and read the bright stars above when
seen through their shady vistas, and when
the romance of nature was weaving her
mystic and fairy and enchanted visions of
davs yet to come, when all would be well
when all would be happy when all
would be bliss." Immediately following
is a single sentence, which being more
than half a page in length, wc have not
room for, but let it suffice to say that it
describes such a sunset as we never could
possibly have conceived.
nr 't;uh irn wc had previously formed
a very vivid idea, as a spot where Nature
had been profuse in the sublime and beau
tiful; but our dull heads had never pic
tured it as 'a fairy isle raising itself in
high peaks abruptly d,000 feet above the
bosom of the blue deep, and tracing its
waved outline indistinctly among the myo
tic and dark clouds which hang like spirit
shapes on its high and misty cones; while
every where else around and farther yet above
the cloud capt peaks, the sky is blue and
clear; and the soft breezes and the mimic
gc from the sea strike balmy, like an
eastern atmosphere upon the check.' The
pages devoted to this island are truly rich.
One moment we are amused with the au
thor's clerical jokes against his catholic
brethren, the next wc have country houses
"sleeping" (in broad day too) "embower
ed in their luxuriance of vine and flow
ers," or Mrs II. "dashing out into the of
fing over the blue surges, in her beautiful
little bark, bounding upon the sea-billow
like a sic any rippled on the waves of a home
stream!" The following passage possesses
too much beautiful originality to permit
us to omit it or curtail it in the slightest.
"We infer that land is not far from us as
n grasshopper has made his oil-shore leaps
to visit so strange a thing as a Man-of-War.
Had he been a Malay, perhaps we
should have asked him questions about
his so unceremoniously boarding us. And
what must have been his surprise, as he
cautiously crawled up our shies and took
his first view of our fearful decks, with
their threatening forty-two pounders lin
ing their long bulwarks, with perforations
through which 'death and destruction'
bear forth to their enemies 'blood and
carnage sounding with death-groans!'
And then to have looked upon the four
or five hundred tarpaulin-headed sons of
the ocean, moving over the decks of the
sea-monster here in unison pulling upon
some sinew of the moving animal, or there
easing a strain upon one of her tiring
wings; then to have seen certain timid
young gentlemen waiting with expectant
attention, the order of the deck-officer,
who was about to speak big words through
a trumpet: and then when he cast his
eyes, as he sat on the lee-gunwale, to the
quarter deck, and caught a look at a ven
erable and graceful old gentleman in gold
lace and epauletts and bright buttons,
moving backwards and forwards in com
manding dignity and self-possession; and
then gazed upon the bright things, and
the dark things, and the painted things,
and the double-edged things, and the
confused things, and the straight things,
and the crooked things, surely his agita
ted bosom must a length have heaved in
fearful and profound surprise. Ah! Mr
Grasshopper! not I should like to have
been upon thy trembling legs. In fear
ful haste to reseck my forsaken land home,
I should, with a single leap, have rc-lavcd
my grasshopper sides!" (p. 1M, vol. 1.)
How poor must our "on-shore" sky seem,
when compared with one described in
page 118, where our author says, "And
now above us higher up than ever before
had seen her, riding through her azure
halls, every moment deepening in their
blue, the lovely Diana moved on in her
course serene, with a sweet star thrown
carelessly on her western hum as if to pion
eer her way of gems and purple " T
many iiie-umes migni we live on shod
nnd never see a star thrown tn i i
Vll U1C u
of the moon, but at sea it is so commo
that it is apt to be done carelessly. !
pages oi nsironomy ami sentiment anr
the description of Kio, heightened bv
large admixture of the author's interest
self, are very fine ; but for nothing do
admire him more than his attempt to nrc
tir.o tliit . silmlllt f'.. M 'I' Ti
Btnt unit r iii i, vimuiii l'CUtl)'1
from the destruction it might meet w
in the more trifling works in which it,
originally found, by placing it both
Latin and (ircek upon the nayes of I
" voyage around the world." How (J,
blood thrills when we read uf his bein
tired " dc pic en cap" (see his improve.
meni upon ine rrencn; "to look att!,
dark eye of the gale," and then "theb
nble roller on the weather beam," ar
"the spurning surge," and "the?,
moan in its flight of storm," " the heat
passage of the tcrial elements," "spanl
gaff down," " double reefed foresail
" close reefed maintopsail," &c. tc.
it a wonder that in such a tumult ai,
confusion as this nominative cases shou'
frequently become objective, and no!
substantives active verbs ?
The lines to a bird that lighted on t!
deck, commencing
" Sweet bird of the isle, too far oYrtlie
Thou hast bent thy slight wing come hit!,'
to me;
There's none that will harm thee, sweetli
of the isle
As thou on this bosom shall rest for a while
arc very beautiful wc do not doubt, In
unfortunately for us a messmate of )t
T. informed us that he strangled the b'r
in order to stun" it just before writing!!
above, and though the two last lines mi:
come under the head of poetic fiction,;
we have said above, our imagination
defective. Fine powers of descripti
are shown in the following mention of I
Banyan " cows." " I marked pariicula
.i' . i'ii i
iv one ecnuc creature, a unnuie comr-
ox, thick and short with a white freckl
face. He looked like a favorite, and thtn
was gravitv and kindness in his couiiiei
ance, and friendship in his manner, and
white frill of his superabundent hide, t
tended down his neck and breast, ai
along the belly, and wreathed itself
Graceful folds over his hind lens." Ho
many pages arc here condensed into a ft
lines ! Imagine the gravity of the o
and th ) gravity of the chaplain the m
tual kindness the friendly manners
the ox which we do not doubt was ful
reciprocated, but whether shown in
mere shake of the hand or in an cmbra
is not stated. It is nnt nnccssarv. D
must be the reader who has it not vivic
before him. And what then must lia
been the effect of that skin drapery. H'
tasty and how useful too! Thatanin
could never have become skin hound.
Joyfully would we go on thws, cullij
beauties (as they readily may he cull
from every page, but we must draff
remarks to a close. As yet we have hlio
the writer as a writer only, and wec
not refrain from mentioning his qua''1
as a man, particularly his sense of pr'T
ety and decision of character in clfl fi
denunciation of the conduct of the I nH
at the Sandwich Islands and the free
with which he lauds every act of our M
sionaries, and condemns those of the
cr residents and of the French ; and t
more particularly as our Author to8
lessly ventured his opinions, entirely "I
cxparte statements of the missions
alone, thus exhibiting a flattering co:
dence in their statements, and a pri
disregard for any thing that the other
ty might have to sny in its defence.
In finishing this too brief notice
must again recur to the discrimina"n
thot author in disre-'ardinur the usual c
torn of travellers, of filling up their bo
with mere descriptions of scenery. ran
Kb oi mstory or traits o! cliaraciu