TRAVELS IN THE CALIFORNIA S. 
49 
my wanderings, a difference between British and American 
seamen, which I believe to be quite general. It is this. The 
Briton is better acquainted with the things to be done on deck 
and among the rigging than the American is. He splices a 
rope better; he knows better how to make a ship look trim 
and comely. But he knows comparatively nothing about the 
hull of his craft. His seven years apprenticeship has been 
devoted to learning the best mode of sailing a vessel and 
keeping her in good condition. He learns nothing more. 
The American, on the other hand, begins at the keel, and 
reads up through every timber, plank and spike, to the bul¬ 
warks. And although he does all the minor labor of the 
fair-day deck work with less neatness and durability, yet he 
will do it so well, and throw his canvass on the winds with 
such skill and daring, as to outsail, as well as outmanage 
his very clever rival. The Fatherland should be proud of 
Jonathan. He is a rough, hard-featured lad ; and in right 
pf primogeniture, as well as other indisputable relations, 
he must succeed to the paternal power over the seas. 
At meridian, on the 16 th of April, we ascertained our¬ 
selves to be about seventy-five miles from the American 
coast. All were weary of the voyage. It had been exceed¬ 
ingly monotonous; not even a storm to break its tedium. 
At two o’clock of this day, however, we had an incident in 
the shape of a squall, from the northwest. It was attended 
with chilling winds which fell upon us like a shower of freez¬ 
ing arrows, and drove everybody, except officers and seamen, 
below. The blowing, the raining, the clatter of quick feet 
upon deck, the cry of the sailors, u heave-a-hoy !” as they 
shorten sail and brace up the yards ; the heavy swells, beat¬ 
ing the ship like ponderous battering-rams ; the air, that up¬ 
per ocean, running its flood most furiously upon that which 
lies beneath ; our vessel riding the one as if escaping from 
the wrath of the other ; the upper surface of the airy seas, 
crowded with fleets of thunder-clouds chasing each other 
madly, and sending out the fire and noise of terrible conflict! 
