A TYPICAL WHALEMAN. 



Captain Charles Robbins, who passed over the other day 

 at the age of 81, was an American down to the feet — 

 Lemuel Bobbins his father, and Rachel Robbins his mother. 

 The former died when Charles was nine years old, and 

 the boy parted with school at the age of twelve, for there 

 were nine sisters and two brothers to be supported. At 

 that age the boy sought an opportunity to ship, but he 

 was declared by the agents to be too young, and he worked 

 at the lever of the old hand press in The Mercury office 

 and carried papers for three years. When he was fifteen, 

 however, he shipped on the ship Swift, without his 

 mother's knowledge, although she subsequently gave her 

 consent. The ship was to sail February 1, but the vessel 

 was frozen in at the dock. Fearing desertions, the captain 

 ordered the men to saw a channel through the ice, and for 

 ten days she was frozen in off Clarks Point with the 

 lonesomest boy in the world on board. 



At length the ship sailed away in February, 1837, and 

 thereafter Robbins lived more stories than all the writers 

 could invent. He visited isles of the Pacific which civili- 

 zation had never touched. In proof of the claim that he 

 encountered the heathen in his utter blindness, the captain 

 used to affirm that not only were they cannibals, but that 

 they had no knowledge of any kind of intoxicating liquor. 

 It was August, 1841, after an absence of fifty-four months, 

 before the boy came back. He went away a stripling, 

 weighing ninety-six, and when he came home he weighed 

 one hundred and sixty, and had to be introduced to his 

 sisters. 



