194 PATAGONIAN EXPEDITIONS: NARRATIVE. 



applying to Messrs. Braun & Blanchard, the Grace Line agents in Sandy 

 Point, to engage my passage and enquire as to whether my personal 

 check on the local Princeton Bank would be accepted in lieu of the cash 

 for such passage, I was very agreeably informed that it most assuredly 

 would, so that I had no further cause for worry on that score. On the 

 afternoon of the twenty-second of September the "Maori" came in and 

 dropped anchor in the roadstead, and late that afternoon I went aboard, 

 since we were to make an early start the following morning. 



Captain Eiley of the "Maori " had assured me that his vessel, although a 

 chartered boat, was a "fourteen-knotter," and in every way superior to the 

 regular Grace Line boats. I subsequently learned that, while his vessel 

 may have been theoretically a fourteen-knotter, she could not in reality 

 make seven. We left Sandy Point early on the morning of September 

 twenty-third, and, after many delays, arrived at New York on November 

 ninth, after a tedious voyage of forty-seven days. Our delays were due to 

 our running aground in the shoal waters off Madonna Point, south of the 

 River Plate, recoaling at Montevideo, where I spent the day very pleas- 

 antly with Colonel Swalm, the American consul, who had been acquainted 

 with my father; a two days' delay off the coast of Brazil on account of 

 disabled machinery; putting into Barbadoes through running short of 

 coal ; a delay of four days at St. Lucia, where we recoaled and the boil- 

 ers were repaired, although they again broke down two days before our 

 arrival and we were compelled to enter New York with but two boilers 

 carrying steam. 



Notwithstanding all these delays, which, under other conditions might 

 have proved irritating, aside from the constant quarrelling between the 

 captain and officers and the well-nigh intolerable provisions with which 

 the table was supplied, I thoroughly enjoyed the long voyage through the 

 Tropics. Moreover, it was just the tonic I needed, and of ever so many 

 times more value to me than would have been untold quantities of iodide 

 of potassium, salicylic acid, and other standard remedies for acute rheu- 

 matism, so that while I reached home still somewhat crippled from my 

 severe attack, I was thoroughly refreshed in body, mind, and spirit, and 

 immediately set about preparing for my third and final trip to Patagonia, 

 without, however, applying to my friends for any additional funds. 



