ACCIDENT. 263 



in being at liberty to take leave of a country 

 from whence one wrong-headed man has banished 

 cheerfulness and content. 



Several whalers were lying in the harbour, 

 and amono^ them the Englishman we had met 

 with in St. Francisco, and who had then been 

 so unsuccessful. Fortune had since been more 

 propitious to him, and he was now returning 

 from the coast of Japan with a rich cargo of 

 spermaceti valued at twenty-five thousand 

 pounds sterling : he had touched here to take 

 in provisions for his voyage homewards. 



I learnt from another captain the particulars 

 of an accident that had happened to one of 

 his companions, which shows the dangers whale- 

 fishers are exposed to, and is a singular exam- 

 ple of a providential escape. 



A North American, Captain Smith, sailed in 

 the year 1820 in a three-masted ship, the Alba- 

 tross, for the South Sea, in pursuit of the sper- 

 maceti whale. When nearly under the Line, 

 west of Washington''s Island, they perceived a 

 whale of an extraordinary size. The boats 

 were all immediately lowered, and, to make the 

 capture more sure, they were manned with the 



