by accident or disease_.



Sea-Sickness.


I had labored under the erroneous impression that sea-sickness was bred of
fear and terror, and would attack only women (of both sexes) and children
of tender minds and frail constitutions. But, when the waves commenced to
roll higher, and the ship began a ceaseless rocking, which was in direct
opposition to the wants and comfort of my system, as all manner of
swinging ever was, I began to have fears that it was not _fright_, but
_swinging_, that made people sick at sea. The inner man threatened to
rebel, and I made my calculations how much higher the billows might swell,
before stomachs would be apt to revolt. We sailed out of sight of the land
before dusk, by which time, however, numbers of ill-mannered stomachs had
given evidence of their bad humor. Though I nodded but once or twice to
old Neptune, during the entire voyage, still I suffered much during the
first five days, from the pressure of intense dizziness and headache,
occasioned by the incessant rocking of our vessel upon the restless
waves. We had a very fine passage, as the sailors would say, but it was
far from being as fine as I had always fancied fine sea voyages would be.
The rocking of the ship would never be less than about two feet up and
down in its width of thirty feet. When the winds blew hard and the waves
rolled high, it swung some, twenty or twenty-five feet up and down at its
bow and at the stern. The highest waves that we saw in our outward passage
were probably from twelve to eighteen feet. That the rocking or swinging
of the ship, is the one and only cause of sea-sickness, may admit of a
question; but that it is the principal cause, there can be little doubt.