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Dana, Richard Henry

"Two Years Before The Mast"

Yankees don't keep Christmas, and shipmasters at sea
never know when Thanksgiving comes, so Jack has no festival at all.
About noon, a man aloft called out "Sail ho!" and looking round,
we saw the head sails of a vessel coming round the point. As she
drew round, she showed the broadside of a full-rigged brig, with the
Yankee ensign at her peak. We ran up our stars and stripes, and,
knowing that there was no American brig on the coast but ourselves,
expected to have news from home. She rounded-to and let go her anchor,
but the dark faces on her yards, when they furled the sails, and the
Babel on deck, soon made known that she was from the Islands.
Immediately afterwards, a boat's crew came aboard, bringing her
skipper, and from them we learned that she was from Oahu, and was
engaged in the same trade with the Ayacucho, Loriotte, etc., between
the coast, the Sandwich Islands, and the leeward coast of Peru and
Chili. Her captain and officers were Americans, and also a part of her
crew; the rest were Islanders. She was called the Catalina, and,
like all the others vessels in that trade, except the Ayacucho, her
papers and colors were from Uncle Sam.


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