This was not, by any means,
a pleasant prospect, for, of all the work that a sailor is called upon
to do in cold weather, there is none so bad as working the
ground-tackle. The heavy chain cables to be hauled and pulled about
the decks with bare hands; wet hawsers, slip-ropes, and buoyropes to
be hauled aboard, dripping in water, which is running up your sleeves,
and freezing; clearing hawse under the bows; getting under weigh and
coming-to, at all hours of the night and day, and a constant
look-out for rocks and sands and turns of tides;- these are some of
the disagreeables of such a navigation to a common sailor. Fair or
foul, he wants to have nothing to do with the ground, tackle between
port and port. One of our hands, too, had unluckily fallen upon a half
of an old newspaper which contained an account of the passage, through
the straits, of a Boston brig, called, I think, the Peruvian, in which
she lost every cable and anchor she had, got aground twice, and
arrived at Valparaiso in distress. This was set off against the
account of the A. J. Donelson, and led us to look forward with less
confidence to the passage, especially as no one on board had ever been
through, and the captain had no very perfect charts.
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