CHAPTER II


CROSSING THE NORTH PACIFIC--SEVEN WEEKS IN A RUSSIAN BRIG

"He took great content and exceeding delight in his voyage, as who doth
not as shall attempt the like."--BURTON.

AT SEA, 700 MILES N.W. OF SAN FRANCISCO.
_Wednesday, July 12, 1865_.

Ten days ago, on the eve of our departure for the Asiatic coast, full
of high hopes and joyful anticipations of pleasure, I wrote in a fair
round hand on this opening page of my journal, the above sentence
from Burton; never once doubting, in my enthusiasm, the complete
realisation of those "future joys," which to "fancy's eye" lay in such
"bright uncertainty," or suspecting that "a life on the ocean wave"
was not a state of the highest felicity attainable on earth. The
quotation seemed to me an extremely happy one, and I mentally blessed
the quaint old Anatomist of Melancholy for providing me with a motto
at once so simple and so appropriate. Of course "he took great content
and exceeding delight in his voyage"; and the wholly unwarranted
assumption that because "he" did, every one else necessarily must, did
not strike me as being in the least absurd.

On the contrary, it carried all the weight of the severest logical
demonstration, and I would have treated with contempt any suggestion
of possible disappointment. My ideas of sea life had been derived