Authors: James Fenimore Cooper
Notwithstanding the difficulties and doubts which beset us, Captain
Williams packed on the ship, determined to get ahead as fast as he
could, while there was light. It no longer blew a gale, and the wind
was hauling more to the southward again. It soon got to be right aft,
and before sunset it had a little westing in it. Fortunately, it
moderated, and we set our main-sail and top-gallant-sails. We had
carried a lower and top-mast studding-sails nearly all day. The worst
feature in our situation, now, was the vast number of islands, or
islets, we met. The shore on each side was mountainous and rude, and
deep indentations were constantly tempting us to turn aside. But,
rightly judging that the set of the tide was a lair index to the true
course, the captain stood on.
The night that followed was one of the most anxious I ever passed. We
were tempted to anchor a dozen times, in some of the different bays,
of which we passed twenty; but could not make up our minds to risk
another cable. We met the flood a little after sunset, and got rid of
it before morning. But the wind kept hauling, and at last it brought
us fairly on a taut bow-line; under top-gallant-sails, however. We
had come too far to recede, or now would have been the time to turn
round, and retrace our steps. But we hoped every moment to reach some
inclination south, again, that would carry us into the open sea. We
ran a vast many chances of shipwreck, passing frightfully near several
reefs; but the same good Providence which had so far protected us,
carried us clear. Never was I so rejoiced as when I saw day returning.
We had the young ebb, and a scant wind, when the sun rose next day. It
was a brilliant morning, however, and everybody predicted an
observation at noon. The channel was full of islands, still, and other
dangers were not wanting; but, as we could see our way, we got through
them all safely. At length our course became embarrassed, so many
large islands, with passages between them, offering on different
sides. One headland, however, lay before us; and, the ship promising
to weather it, we held on our way. It was just ten o'clock as we
approached this cape, and we found a passage westward that actually
led into the ocean! All hands gave three cheers as we became certain
of this fact, the ship tacking as soon as far enough ahead, and
setting seaward famously with the tide.
Captain Williams now told us to get our quadrants, for the heavens
were cloudless, and we should have a horizon in time for the sun. He
was anxious to get the latitude of our discovery. Sure enough, it so
fell out, and we prepared to observe; some predicting one parallel,
some another. As for the skipper himself, he said he thought we were
still to the eastward of the Cape; but he felt confident that we had
come out to the westward of Le Maire. Marble was silent; but he had
observed, and made his calculations, before either of the others had
commenced the last. I saw him scratch his head, and go to the chart
which lay on the companionway. Then I heard him shout—
"In the Pacific, by St. Kennebunk!"—he always swore by this pious
individual when excited—"We have come through the Straits of Magellan
without knowing it!"
"Sound trumpets, ho!—weigh anchor—loosen sail—
The seaward-flying banners chide delay;
As if't were heaven that breathes this kindly gale,
Our life-like bark beneath it speeds away.—"
PINKNEY.
The stout ship Crisis had, like certain persons, done a good thing
purely by chance, Had her exploit happened in the year 1519, instead
of that of 1800, the renowned passage we had just escaped from would
have been called the Crisis Straits, a better name than the mongrel
appellation it now bears; which is neither English, nor Portuguese.
The ship had been lost, like a man in the woods, and came out nearer
home, than those in her could have at all expected. The "bloody
currents" had been at the bottom of the mistake, though this time they
did good, instead of harm. Any one who has been thoroughly lost on a
heath, or in a forest, or, even in a town, can comprehend how the head
gets turned on such occasions, and will understand the manner in which
we had mystified ourselves.
I shall remember the feelings of delight with which I looked around
me, as the ship passed out into the open ocean, to my dying day. There
lay the vast Pacific, its long, regular waves rolling in towards the
coast, in mountain-like ridges, it is true, but under a radiant sun,
and in a bright atmosphere. Everybody was cheered by the view, and
never did orders sound more pleasant in my ears, than when the captain
called out, in a cheerful voice, "to man the weather braces." This
command was given the instant it was prudent; and the ship went
foaming past the last cape with the speed of a courser. Studding-sails
were then set, and, when the sun was dipping, we had a good offing,
were driving to the northward under everything we could carry, and had
a fair prospect of an excellent run from the neighbourhood of Terra
del Fuego, and its stormy seas.
It is not my intention to dwell on our passage along the western coast
of South America. A voyage to the Pacific was a very different thing
in the year 1800, however, from what it is to-day. The power of Spain
was then completely in the ascendant, intercourse with any nation but
the mother country, being strictly prohibited. It is true, a species
of commerce, that was called the "forced trade on the Spanish Main"
existed under that code of elastic morals, which adapts the maxim of
"your purse or your life" to modern diplomacy, as well as to the
habits of the highwayman. According to divers masters in the art of
ethics now flourishing among ourselves, more especially in the
atmosphere of the journals of the commercial communities, the people
that "
can
trade and
won't
trade,
must be made to trade
." At the
commencement of the century, your mercantile moralists were far less
manly in the avowal of their sentiments, though their practices were
in no degree wanting in the spirit of our more modern theories. Ships
were fitted out, armed, and navigated, on this just principle, quite
as confidently and successfully as if the tongue had declared all that
the head had conceived.
Guarda-Costas were the arguments used, on the other side of this
knotty question, by the authorities of Spain; and a very insufficient
argument, on the whole, did they prove to be. It is an old saying,
that vice is twice as active as virtue; the last sleeping, while the
former is hard at work. If this be true of things in general, it is
thrice true as regards smugglers and custom-house officers. Owing to
this circumstance, and sundry other causes, it is certain that English
and American vessels found the means of plundering the inhabitants of
South America, at the period of which I am writing, without having
recourse to the no longer reputable violence of Dampier, Wood, Rogers,
or Drake. As I feel bound to deal honestly with the reader, whatever I
may have done by the Spanish laws, I shall own that we made one or two
calls, as we proceeded north, shoving ashore certain articles
purchased in London, and taking on board dollars, in return for our
civility. I do not know whether I am bound, or not, to apologize for
my own agency in these irregular transactions—regular, would be quite
as apposite a word—for, had I been disposed to murmur, it would have
done my morals no good, nor the smuggling any harm. Captain Williams
was a silent man, and it was not easy to ascertain precisely what he
thought
on the subject of smuggling; but, in the way of
practice
, I never saw any reason to doubt that he was a firm
believer in the doctrine of Free Trade. As for Marble, he put me in
mind of a certain renowned editor of a well-known New York journal,
who evidently thinks that all things in heaven and earth, sun, moon,
and stars, the void above and the caverns beneath us, the universe, in
short, was created to furnish materials for newspaper paragraphs; the
worthy mate, just as confidently believing that coasts, bays, inlets,
roadsteads and havens, were all intended by nature, as means to run
goods ashore wherever the duties, or prohibitions, rendered it
inconvenient to land them in the more legal mode. Smuggling, in his
view of the matter, was rather more creditable than the regular
commerce, since it required greater cleverness.
I shall not dwell on the movements of the Crisis, for the five months
that succeeded her escape from the Straits of Magellan. Suffice it to
say, that she anchored at as many different points on the coast; that
all which came up the main-hatch, went ashore; and all that came over
the bulwarks, was passed down into the run. We were chased by
guarda-costas
seven times, escaping from them on each occasion,
with ease; though we had three little running fights. I observed that
Captain Williams was desirous of engaging these emissaries of the law,
as easily as possible, ordering us to fire altogether at their
spars. I have since thought that this moderation proceeded from a
species of principle that is common enough—a certain half-way code of
right and wrong—which encouraged him to smuggle, but which caused him
to shrink from taking human life. Your half-way rogues are the bane of
honesty.
After quitting the Spanish coast, altogether, we proceeded north, with
the laudable intention of converting certain quantities of
glass-beads, inferior jack-knives, frying-pans, and other homely
articles of the same nature, into valuable furs. In a word, we shaped
our course for that district which bids fair to set the mother and
daughter by the ears, one of these days, unless it shall happen to be
disposed of
à la Texas
, or, what is almost as bad,
à la
Maine
, ere long. At that time the whole north-west coast was
unoccupied by white men, and I felt no scruples about trading with the
natives who presented themselves with their skins as soon as we had
anchored, believing that they had the best right to the country and
its products. We passed months in this traffic, getting, at every
point where we stopped, something to pay us for our trouble.
We went as far north as 53°, and that is pretty much all I ever knew
of our last position. At the time, I thought we had anchored in a bay
on the main land, but I have since been inclined to think it was in
one of the many islands that line that broken coast. We got a very
secure berth, having been led to it by a native pilot who boarded us
several leagues at sea, and who knew enough English to persuade our
captain that he could take us to a point where sea-otter skins might
be had for the asking. Nor did the man deceive us, though a more
unpromising-looking guide never had charge of smuggling Christians. He
carried us into a very small bay, where we found plenty of water,
capital holding-ground, and a basin as smooth as a dock. But one
wind—that which blew from the north-west—could make any impression
on it, and the effects of even that were much broken by a small island
that lay abreast of the entrance; leaving good passages, on each side
of it, out to sea. The basin itself was rather small, it is true, but
it did well enough for a single ship. Its diameter may have been three
hundred yards, and I never saw a sheet of natural water that was so
near a circle. Into a place like this, the reader will imagine, we did
not venture without taking the proper precautions. Marble was sent in
first, to reconnoitre and sound, and it was on his report that Captain
Williams ventured to take the ship in.
At that time, ships on the North-West Coast had to use the greatest
precautions against the treachery and violence of the natives. This
rendered the size of our haven the subject of distrust; for, lying in
the middle of it, where we moored, we were barely an arrow's flight
from the shore, in every direction but that which led to the narrow
entrance. It was a most secure anchorage, as against the dangers of
the sea, but a most insecure one as against the dangers of the
savages. This we all felt, as soon as our anchors were down; but,
intending to remain only while we bartered for the skins which we had
been told were ready for the first ship that should offer, we trusted
to vigilance as our safeguard in the interval.
I never could master the uncouth sounds of the still more uncouth
savages of that distant region. The fellow who carried us in had a
name of his own, doubtless, but it was not to be pronounced by a
Christian tongue, and he got the
sobriquet
of the Dipper from
us, owing to the manner in which he ducked at the report of our
muskets, which had been discharged by Marble merely with the intention
to renew the cartridges. We had hardly got into the little basin,
before the Dipper left us, returning in an hour, however, with a canoe
loaded to the water's edge, with beautiful skins, and accompanied by
three savages as wild-looking, seemingly as fierce, and certainly as
avaricious as he was himself. These auxiliaries, through various
little circumstances, were known among us that same afternoon, by the
several appellations of Smudge, Tin-pot, and Slit-nose. These were not
heroic names, of a certainty, but their owners had as little of the
heroic in their appearance, as usually falls to the lot of man in the
savage state. I cannot tell the designation of the tribes to which
these four worthies belonged, nor do I know any more of their history
and pursuits than the few facts which came under my own immediate
observation. I did ask some questions of the captain, with a view to
obtain a few ideas on this subject, but all he knew was, that these
people put a high value on blankets, beads, gun-powder, frying-pans,
and old hoops, and that they set a remarkably low price on sea-otter
skins, as well as on the external coverings of sundry other
animals. An application to Mr. Marble was still less successful,
being met by the pithy answer that he was "no naturalist, and knew
nothing about these critturs, or any wild beasts, in general."
Degraded as the men certainly were, however, we thought them quite
good enough to be anxious to trade with them. Commerce, like misery,
sometimes makes a man acquainted with strange bed-fellows.