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- its name to the Cape, was almost lost in weathering it.
The next navigator round the Cape was Sir Francis Drake, who, on
Raleigh’s Expedition, beholding for the first time, from the Isthmus of
Darien, the “goodlie South Sea,” like a true-born Englishman, vowed,
please God, to sail an English ship thereon; which the gallant sailor
did, to the sore discomfiture of the Spaniards on the coasts of Chili
and Peru.
But perhaps the greatest hardships on record, in making this celebrated
passage, were those experienced by Lord Anson’s squadron in 1736. Three
remarkable and most interesting narratives record their disasters and
sufferings. The first, jointly written by the carpenter and gunner of
the Wager; the second by young Byron, a midshipman in the same ship;
the third, by the chaplain of the Centurion. White-Jacket has them all;
and they are fine reading of a boisterous March night, with the
casement rattling in your ear, and the chimney-stacks blowing down upon
the pavement, bubbling with rain-drops.
But if you want the best idea of Cape Horn, get my friend Dana’s
unmatchable “Two Years Before the Mast.” But you can read, and so you
must have read it. His chapters describing Cape Horn must have been
written with an icicle.
At the present day the horrors of the Cape have somewhat abated. This
is owing to a growing familiarity with it; but, more than all, to the
improved condition of ships in all respects, and the means now
generally in use of preserving the health of the crews in times of
severe and prolonged exposure.
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