220 THE WHALEMAN'S ADVENTURES. 



at his home. Amid the solitude of the ocean 

 he passes the greater portion of his days ; and if 

 he survives the perils of his adventurous pur- 

 suit, the storms of the ocean, and the pestilence 

 of different climes, he usually finds that the 

 friends of his youth are all gone, and that he is 

 almost a stranger at his own fireside. And yet 

 this mode of life has its own joys and emolu- 

 ments ; for, if ordinarily successful, in the course 

 of fifteen or twenty years, a whaleman will lay 

 up a moderate competence for the rest of his 

 days, and meanwhile, notwithstanding the un- 

 favourable influences which are often at work 

 in the whale ship, many are forming noble 

 characters. 



Although it is no genial soil, yet virtue, 

 humanity, true nobility, and the fear of God, 

 can live and grow in a whale ship, both fore and 

 aft. I have met them on this present voyage, 

 and in some signal instances elsewhere, which 

 it would be base ingratitude and a denying of 

 God's grace, not to acknowledge and give credit 

 for. But who that knows it, as I do, would 

 choose a life in a whale ship, or life anywhere 



