A SKETCH IN THE TROPICS. 159 



grateful and affectionate leave of his deliverer, em- 

 barked with his wife and children. They had been 

 several days at sea before they remembered that they 

 had forgotten to tell their American friends their real 

 name. The latter had never inquired it, and the 

 Estovals being accustomed to address one another by 

 their Christian names, it had never been mentioned. 



Meantime, the good seed Captain Eeady had sown 

 brought the honest Yankee but a sorry harvest. His 

 employers had small sympathy with the feelings of 

 humanity that had induced him to run the risk of 

 carrying off a Spanish state-prisoner from under the 

 guns of a Spanish battery. Their correspondents at 

 the Havannah had had some trouble and difficulty on 

 account of the affair, and had written to Philadelphia 

 to complain of it. Eeady lost his ship, and could 

 only obtain from his employers certificates of charac- 

 ter of so ambiguous and unsatisfactory a nature, that 

 for a long time he found it impossible to get the com- 

 mand of another vessel 



In the autumn of 1824, I left Baltimore as super- 

 cargo of the brig Perseverance, Captain Eeady. Pro- 

 ceeding to the Havannah, we discharged our cargo, 

 took in another, partly on our own account, partly on 

 that of the Spanish Government, and sailed for Callao 

 on the 1st December, exactly eight days before the 

 celebrated battle of Ayacucho dealt the finishing blow 

 to Spanish rule on the southern continent of Ame- 



