30 
SCENES IN THE PACIFIC. 
their perfume on the air, and the fruits of trees, and shrubs, 
and plants, are poured into the lap of the ripened year. 
Who does not love the birds ? who is not made better 
and happier by hearing them sing among the buds and 
leaves, when the streams begins to babble, and the mosses 
to peer above the retiring snows ? when the violet opens, 
and meadows and forests change the brown garb of winter 
for the green mantle of the young year? No one who 
toves nature and can sympathize with it. 
But this one—perched in the rigging of the ship in which 
we had been imprisoned for weeks—a messenger from the 
glens and hills sweetly chanting our welcome to them, was 
an object of the tenderest interest. It had the cordial greet¬ 
ing of our hearts ; and w T hile talking about it, we could not 
forbear reaching our hands towards it, and grieving that we 
had no intelligible language wherewith to convey our salu¬ 
tations, and ask the tidings from its beautiful home. The 
captain consulted his reckoning, and found that we lay 
about one hundred miles northwest-by-north from the island 
of Hawaii. 
The breeze, instead of decreasing with the ascent of the 
sun, as it had done for a number of days past, held on ; and 
with all the weather studding-sails out, we made about ten 
knots during most of the morning. iVbout ten o’clock, Mr. 
Newell, who had been watching that embankment of cloud 
in the southwest, which had excited our hopes at sunrise, 
touched his hat to Captain Duncan and remarked, u That 
cloud retains its bearing and shape very much like the loom¬ 
ing of land, sir. We must be in sight of some of the islands: 
we made ten knots by the log, sir, during my watch.” 
The Captain had expressed his belief that he could sail his 
ship under that cloud without lead line, or copperbottom; and 
it was still his opinion that an English commander like him¬ 
self, an old salt of thirty years’ standing, would be as likely 
to know the complexion of theland as anygentleman with less 
experienced optics. However, he sent Tom for his glass and 
