MUTINY OF MANSON'S CREW. 
18 
in which he was then placed, acting as he was in defiance of 
an express mandate, issued by the head of the church, might 
instead of being an advantage, turn out to be a decided incum¬ 
brance, and ultimately prove the instrument of defeating the 
object of the expedition, from the well known influence, which 
“the holy father” always exercised over the crew of a ship, 
forebore to enlist one in his train, and it will soon appear that 
what he considered an act of caution and of prudence, proved 
the cause of his ruin and discomfiture. 
The ship had not sailed many days from her port, when she 
encountered a violent storm in the chops of the channel, which 
greatly disabled her, but Manson determined to keep the sea, 
encouraged by the prospect of the golden harvest, which 
awaited him on the other side of the Atlantic. Unfortunately 
however for him, and the enterprising projectors of the ex¬ 
pedition, the crew being all rigid catholics, were deeply 
immersed in superstition and bigotry, they saw in the storm 
which raged around them, a manifest declaration of the dis¬ 
pleasure of the Almighty; in every crack of the masts, they 
thought they heard the voice of the holy father of the church, 
denouncing the terrors of his unappeasable vengeance on their 
recreant heads, on account of their disobedience to his mandate; 
no priest was on board, to quell the tumult and agitation of their 
alarmed souls ; to hear from their trembling lips, the confession 
of their heinous transgression, and to give them absolution from 
its consequences ; even the very absence of ** a holy father,” was 
to them an all convincing proof, that they were doomed to 
destruction, for had only one been on board, for his sake only, 
w ould the ship be spared from visiting the bottom of the ocean. 
In this excess of their fear, for the destruction which impended 
over them in this world and the horrors of the purgatory which 
awaited them in the next, they made a vow, that should their 
lives be spared, they would force their captain to navigate the 
vessel to the first port, which they could make in Italy; from 
which they would go bare-footed to Rome, and there subject 
themselves, to whatever penance might be imposed upon them, 
for the terrible sins which they had committed. The storm 
