"You'd better wait till you get round Cape Horn," says an old
croaker.
"Yes," says another, "you may see Boston, but you've got to 'smell
hell' before that good day."
Rumors also of what had been said in the cabin, as usual, found
their way forward. The steward had heard the captain say something
about the straits of Magellan, and the man at the wheel fancied he had
heard him tell the "passenger" that, if he found the wind ahead and
the weather very bad off the Cape, he should stick her off for New
Holland, and come home round the Cape of Good Hope.
This passenger- the first and only one we had had, except to go
from port to port, on the coast, was no one else than a gentleman whom
I had known in my better days; and the last person I should have
expected to have seen on the coast of California- Professor N---, of
Cambridge. I had left him quietly seated in the chair of Botany and
Ornithology, in Harvard University; and the next I saw of him, was
strolling about San Diego beach, in a sailor's pea-jacket, with a wide
straw hat, and barefooted, with his trowsers rolled up to his knees,
picking up stones and shells.
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