3o6 



MY LIFE 



[Chap. 



Fancy your regrets had you lost all your Pyrenean mosses 

 on your voyage home, or should you now lose all your South 

 American collection, and you will have some idea of what I 

 suffer. But besides this, I have lost a number of sketches, 

 drawings, notes, and observations on natural history, besides 

 the three most interesting years of my journal, the whole of 

 which, unlike any pecuniary loss, can never be replaced ; so 

 you will see that I have some need of philosophic resigna- 

 tion to bear my fate with patience and equanimity. 



" Day after day we continued in the boats. The winds 

 changed, blowing dead from the point to which we wanted 

 to go. We were scorched by the sun, my hands, nose, and 

 ears being completely skinned, and were drenched continually 

 by the seas or spray. We were therefore almost constantly 

 wet, and had no comfort and little sleep at night. Our 

 meals consisted of raw pork and biscuit, with a little 

 preserved meat or carrots once a day, which was a great 

 luxury, and a short allowance of water, which left us as 

 thirsty as before directly after we had drunk it. Ten days 

 and ten nights we spent in this manner. We were still two 

 hundred miles from Bermuda, when in the afternoon a vessel 

 was seen, and by eight in the evening we were on board her, 

 much rejoiced to have escaped a death on the wide ocean, 

 whence none would have come to tell the tale. The ship 

 was the Jordeson^ bound for London, and proves to be one 

 of the slowest old ships going. With a favourable wind and 

 all sail set, she seldom does more than five knots, her average 

 being two or three, so that we have had a most tedious time 

 of it, and even now cannot calculate with any certainty as to 

 when we shall arrive. Besides this, she was rather short of 

 provisions, and as our arrival exactly doubled her crew, we 

 were all obliged to be put on strict allowance of bread, meat, 

 and water. A little ham and butter of the captain's were soon 

 used up, and we have been now for some time on the poorest 

 of fare. We have no suet, butter, or raisins with which to 

 make 'duff,' or even molasses, and barely enough sugar to 

 sweeten our tea or coffee, which we take with dry, coarse 

 biscuit, and for dinner, beef or pork of the very worst quality 



