CHAPTER II.

Departure from New York.--Reflections of the Author.--Navigation,
falling in with other Ships, and various Incidents, till the Vessel
comes in Sight of the Falkland Isles.


All being ready for our departure, we went on board ship, and weighed
anchor on the 6th of September, in the morning. The wind soon fell off,
and the first day was spent in drifting down to Staten island, where we
came to anchor for the night. The next day we weighed anchor again; but
there came on another dead calm, and we were forced to cast anchor near
the lighthouse at Sandy Hook. On the 8th we weighed anchor for the third
time, and by the help of a fresh breeze from the southwest, we succeeded
in passing the bar; the pilot quitted us at about eleven o'clock, and
soon after we lost sight of the coast.

One must have experienced it one's self, to be able to conceive the
melancholy which takes possession of the soul of a man of sensibility,
at the instant that he leaves his country and the civilized world, to go
to inhabit with strangers in wild and unknown lands. I should in vain
endeavor to give my readers an idea, even faintly correct, of the
painful sinking of heart that I suddenly felt, and of the sad glance
which I involuntarily cast toward a future so much the more frightful to
me, as it offered nothing but what was perfectly confused and uncertain.
A new scene of life was unfolded before me, but how monotonous, and ill
suited to diminish the dejection with which my mind was overwhelmed! For
the first time in my life, I found myself under way upon the main sea,
with nothing to fix my regards and arrest my attention but the frail
machine which bore me between the abyss of waters and the immensity of