1884.]
��Captain George Hamilton Perkins, U.S.N.
��209
��On one hand was the rounded horizon dipping into the broad Atlantic ; on the other, the angry line of rollers with their thunderous roar, backed by white beach and dense forest, with occa- sional glimpses of blue hills in the distant interior. This and nothing more, from day to day, save when a small village of thatched huts came into view, adding a scant feature to the landscape ; or a solitary canoe outside the line of breakers ; or strange sail to seaward ; or school of porpoises, leaping and blowing, windward bound ; or hungry shark prowling round the ship, lent momentary interest to the watery solitude. It was a privilege to fall in with another cruiser, whether of our own or of the English flag. On such occasions, down would go the boats for the exchange of visits, the comparison of notes, and sometimes the discussion of a dinner. The English officers had numerous captures and handsome sums of prize-money to tell of, while our people, as a rule, could only talk of hopes and possibil- ities. Our laws regulating captures were as inflexible as the Westminster Catechism, and a captain could not detain a vessel without great risk of civil damages, unless slaves were actu- ally on board. Suspected ships might have all the fittings and infamous equi- page for the slave traffic on board, but if their masters produced correct papers the vessels could not be touched ; and our officers not infrequently had the mortification of learning that ships they had overhauled, and believed to be slavers, but could not seize under their instructions, got off the coast eventually with large cargoes of ebon humanity on board.
Not so with the English com- manders, whose instructions enabled
��them to take and send to their prize- courts all vessels, except those under the American flag, under the slightest showing of nefarious character ; and their hauls of prize-money were rich and frequent.
The intercourse with the EngHsh officers, notes Master Perkins, at first cordial and agreeable, became, after a few months, cold and indifferent. Her Majesty's officers no longer cared to show politeness or friendly feeling. The first premonitions of the Rebellion in the John Brown raid, the break-up of the democracy at Charleston, and the violence of the Southern press concerning the probable results of the pending presidential election, con- vincing them that the long-predicted and wished-for day — the breaking up of the Republic — was nigh at hand, and their real feelings as Englishmen cropped out but too plainly ; but of this, more anon.
Despite the perils of the surf, the dangers of the inhospitable climate, and the unfriendly character of some of the savage tribes to be met with, the ad- venturous spirit and dauntless courage of Master Perkins was not to be balked. Volunteering for every duty, no matter how dangerous, hardly a boat ever left the ship that he was not in it. The life of the mess through his unfailing good humor and exuberant flow of spirits, he was the soul of every expedi- tion, whether of service or pleasure ; and before the cruise of some twenty- two months was up, he came to know almost every prominent tribe, chief, and king on the coast. Now dining with a king off" the strangest of viands ; now holding "palaver" with another; now spending a day with a chief and his numerous wives ; now visiting a French barracoon, where, under a fiction
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