PREFACE. 



THIS book is simply what its title indicates, 

 the mind of the author pretending to be only 

 the camera obscura through which the rays 

 from Nature and Nature's living scenes have 

 passed uncolored to the canvass. It may be 

 that some who were with the writer, and oth- 

 ers too, experienced and old in whaling life, 

 may like to glance through this gallery of Da- 

 guerreotypes, and by their help recall to mind 

 scenes of which, if they can not say, like many 

 in this vocation, Quaeque ipse miserrima vidi, 

 yet with equal truth, Quorum pars magna fui. 



To them, the author is sure it will be pleas- 

 urable to review life-passages that were fraught 

 with no ordinary interest in passing, and to com- 

 pare the glimpses and sun-paintings found here 

 with their more subtle images in the brain, 

 which memory loves to be retracing in the down- 

 hill of life. 



M84712 



