24 
SCENES IN THE PACIFIC. 
elements have raved twelve days and are at rest again. Quiet 
and variable breezes from the north push us pleasantly 
along; appetites return ; we shave our chins, comb our hair, 
and begin once more to wear the general aspect of men. 
On the nineteenth of December our group of characters 
was honored by the appearance of a fine honest fellow from 
the steerage. He had suffered so much from sea-sickness,, 
that he appeared a mere sack of bones. He was a native 
of one of the Southern States ; but the Yankee spirit must 
have been born in him : for he had been to the Californias 
with a chest of carpenter’s tools, in search of wealth ! Un¬ 
fortunate man ! He had built the Commandante-General a 
house, and never was paid for it; he had built other houses 
with like consequences to his purse; had made many 
thousands of red cedar shingles for large prices and no 
pay ; and last and worst of all, had made love, for two 
years, to a Spanish brunette, obtained her plighted faith 
for marriage, and did not marry her. It was no fault of his. 
During the last years of his wooing, a Californian Cava- 
liero, that is, a pair of mustachios on horseback, had been 
in the habit of eating a social dish of fried beans occasionally 
with the father of the girl, and by way of reciprocating his 
hospitality, he advanced the old gentlemen to the dignity of 
a grandsire. 
This want of fidelity in his betrothed wrought sad havoc 
in our countryman’s affections. He had looked with confiding 
tenderness on her person, returned her smile, and given her 
one by one his soul’s best emotions. Such affections, when 
they go forth and are lost, leave a void to which they never re¬ 
turn. He was alone again without trust, with nothing on earth 
or rather, on the sea, to love but his carpenter’s tools. The 
object of his regard had disgraced herself and him. To avoid 
the scene of his misery, he had invested in horses the little 
money he had accumulated ; accompanied the Hudson’s Bay 
Trading Company to Oregon, and having cultivated land a 
a year or two in the valley of the Willamette, had sold his 
