impatient of difficulties. But it is a still greater evil to me that I
am self-educated: for the first fourteen years of my life I ran wild
on a common and read nothing but our Uncle Thomas' books of voyages. At
that age I became acquainted with the celebrated poets of our own
country; but it was only when it had ceased to be in my power to derive
its most important benefits from such a conviction that I perceived the
necessity of becoming acquainted with more languages than that of my
native country. Now I am twenty-eight and am in reality more
illiterate than many schoolboys of fifteen. It is true that I have
thought more and that my daydreams are more extended and magnificent,
but they want (as the painters call it) KEEPING; and I greatly need a
friend who would have sense enough not to despise me as romantic, and
affection enough for me to endeavour to regulate my mind. Well, these
are useless complaints; I shall certainly find no friend on the wide
ocean, nor even here in Archangel, among merchants and seamen. Yet
some feelings, unallied to the dross of human nature, beat even in
these rugged bosoms. My lieutenant, for instance, is a man of
wonderful courage and enterprise; he is madly desirous of glory, or
rather, to word my phrase more characteristically, of advancement in
his profession. He is an Englishman, and in the midst of national and
professional prejudices, unsoftened by cultivation, retains some of the
noblest endowments of humanity. I first became acquainted with him on
board a whale vessel; finding that he was unemployed in this city, I
easily engaged him to assist in my enterprise. The master is a person
of an excellent disposition and is remarkable in the ship for his
gentleness and the mildness of his discipline. This circumstance,
added to his well-known integrity and dauntless courage, made me very
desirous to engage him. A youth passed in solitude, my best years
spent under your gentle and feminine fosterage, has so refined the
groundwork of my character that I cannot overcome an intense distaste