46 
SCENES IN THE PACIFIC. 
ing goats, and here and there on the projecting cliffs, stood a 
group of stalwart figures, brown as the rocks, shouting their 
pleasure at seeing our ship, with all sails steadily drawing, 
push through the waves. Having rounded the southwestern 
cape, we laid our course through the channel between Oahu 
and Taui, with the intention of availing ourselves of the 
northern u variables,” to carry us to the American coast. 
In the cabin we had seven passengers ; Mr. Chamberlain, 
the fiscal agent of the American Missions at the islands—a 
man of a fine mind and unpretending goodness, who had un¬ 
dertaken the voyage for the benefit of his health—Mr. Cobb, 
the mate of a whaler, a plain honest man, going home to die 
of an injury from the falling of a spar on shipboard ; a spend¬ 
thrift of Philadelphia, returning from a two or three years’ 
spree in the Pacific ; and a brace of Charlestown boys, who 
were on their way homeward for goods and sweethearts. 
One of these was an excellent little fellow, with a soul full 
of music and justice ; the other a singer of bass and an acting 
agent general, in the same department. The only representa¬ 
tive of the fair sex we could boast of was a half-breed Ha¬ 
waiian lass, going to visit the a Major,” her father, an old 
mountaineer from New England, who was keeping a small 
shop at Santa Barbara, in Upper California. 
Captain Paty was a little man, with a quiet spirit, and a 
generous heart; a New England man who always kept his 
eye to the windward, and gave his sails to the stoutest 
breeze without fear of clew lines or stays. The mate, a 
lusty English tar of the Greenwich school, was a jolly old 
boy, whose face was always charged with a smile, ready to 
be let off on the least occasion of conferring happiness. 
Our second mate was an Italian, who had left his country 
for doubtful reasons, married an American girl in the city 
of New York, buried her, and was now roaming the seas 
in the double capacity of second mate and ship’s carpenter, 
for the means of educating his only child. 
Our crew was a collection of odd-fellows. The first in 
