AND PORTO SANTO. 13 



appearance from the steerage after the storm, arrayed in a cocked 

 hat and a dressing gown. A countryman of my own, who, liaving 

 worked his way up, by activity and long service, from before the 

 mast to the rank of master's mate in the navy, had been solaced 

 just after he was thrown out of employ, by a small legacy from an 

 old aunt, and had been persuaded to give up his intention of 

 joining Mr. Birkbeck, for the more profitable scheme of collecting 

 orchil, shooting gulls^ and rabbits, and cultivating potatoes on the 

 Desertas, the right of which he had purchased for ^200 of a 

 Portuguese marchioness, who wanted to raise the wind to make 

 good her engagements as lady patroness, and joint proprietor of a 

 corps of twenty-two French comedians, with whom I had the 

 misfortune to sail in a small brig from Havre to Lisbon, and who 

 would have run the supply of water rather hard during our long 

 passage, had not the ladies (one of whom had sailed in the Nile 

 and seen crocodiles) declared, from the moment of coming on 

 board, that a coffee-cup fairly filled for each, was qviite as much 

 as they had been in the habit of using for their daily ablutions. 

 An American gentleman, of polished manners and most obhging 

 disposition, a younger son, as I afterwards learned, of one of the 

 richest merchants of Philadelphia, who, after a three year's tour 



" These gulls are salted and sold to the poorer Portuguese, who boil them in their 

 soup. The one I examined, appeared to be a variety of the larus marinus et ncevius of 

 Gmelin, but the head was black (tipped with brown) instead of yellow, and the legs 

 grey instead of reddish; the plumage of its throat was as white as that of the belly, 

 which was however speckled with brownish grey ; the under feathers of the tail were 

 also white and tipped with brownish grey ; the under feathers of the wings were of the 

 same grey, the upper part of the head of a light grey, the back and neck thickly 

 speckled with greyish brown ; the long feathers of the wings were of the same colour, 

 the remiges dark brown; the short upper feathers of the tail white, speckled with 

 greyish brown ; the longer feathers greyish brown, irregularly speckled with white : it 

 measured four feet five inches between the tips of the extended wings, and one foot 

 eleven inches in length. 



