Every day, and all day long, be the weather what it might, I was
stationed on deck, generally seated on the highest point of the ship's
stern, directly over the rudder, to enjoy a full view of that most
graceful and exquisite spectacle, a large vessel's course through the
mighty deep. Ours was a splendid one, a West Indiaman, almost rivalling
the sea-palaces of the East India Company, and manned in the first
style. The troops on board, under the command of a field officer,
greatly added to the effect and comfort of the thing, for nothing is so
conducive to the latter as military discipline, well and mildly
maintained. Although our party was perfectly distinct from those who
went out entirely at the charge of government, consisting of several
officers and their wives, yet we too were nearly all military, including
the commandant, and were strictly amenable to martial law. Of course
that soul of domestic and social comfort, punctuality, reigned
paramount; every meal was regulated by beat of drum, subordination
carefully preserved, and decorum, to the most minute particular,
insisted on. No dishabille could appear, in the cabin or on deck; no
litter, not an article of luggage visible. All the sick people, all the
cross people, and all the whimsical people were stowed away in their
respective berths, and such drawing-room elegance, combined with the
utmost freedom of good-humor and the unrestrained frankness that results
from a consciousness of proper restraint, pervaded our little select
coterie, amounting to seventeen gentlemen and two ladies, that it did
not need the miserable contrast which I afterwards experienced on the
homeward passage, to assure me we were among the most favored of ocean
travellers.

How very much do they err who consider the absence of order and method
as supplying greater liberty or removing a sense of restraint. Such
freedom is galling to me; and in my eyes, the want of punctuality is a