Two Years before the Mast, A personal narrative of life at sea by Richard Henry Dana, Jr. has been on the life list… and I’m glad it was. Published in 1840 for the first time, I read the 1946 edition from The World Publishing Company. I note the publishing details because I went to the Project Gutenberg edition (free, out-of-copyright books) site to cut and paste the quotes below. It was not an exercise in accuracy. Here’s a direct link to the full text (916Kb) where I found many missing a few clauses and sentences along the way. Frustrating. Perhaps the edition which was used to create it was elided, but what a challenge. Makes you almost long for Google Print, as long as we get accurate representations of printed material.
It’s a great journal, written by an educated youth taking some time away from his Harvard education because of his health. From 1834-1836, he worked on a merchant ship from Boston, gathering hides from the California coast. His recounting is matter of fact, but never boring. I noted three passages.
First, this one reminds me of the fake graduation speech which spread like a virus several years ago, with its line about “Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.”
Such are the people who inhabit a country embracing four or five hundred miles of sea-coast, with several good harbors; with fine forests in the north; the waters filled with fish, and the plains covered with thousands of herds of cattle; blessed with a climate than which there can be no better in the world; free from all manner of diseases, whether epidemic or endemic; and with a soil in which corn yields from seventy to eighty fold. In the hands of an enterprising people, what a country this might be! we are ready to say. Yet how long would a people remain so, in such a country? The Americans (as those from the United States are called) and Englishmen, who are fast filling up the principal towns, and getting the trade into their hands, are indeed more industrious and effective than the Spaniards; yet their children are brought up Spaniards in most respects, and if the “California fever” (laziness) spares the first generation, it always attacks the second. [From p. 194]
Second, he made this observation 15 years before gold was found (and 161 years before the Netscape IPO). Prescient.
We sailed down this magnificent bay with a light wind, the tide, which was running out, carrying us at the rate of four or five knots. It was a fine day; the first of entire sunshine we had had for more than a month. We passed directly under the high cliff on which the presidio is built, and stood into the middle of the bay, from whence we could see small bays, making up into the interior, on every side; large and beautifully-wooded islands; and the mouths of several small rivers. If California ever becomes a prosperous country,
this bay will be the centre of its prosperity. The abundance of wood and water, the extreme fertility of its shores, the excellence of its climate, which is as near to being perfect as any in the world, and its facilities for navigation, affording the best anchoring-grounds in the whole western coast of America, all fit it for a place of great importance; and, indeed, it has attracted much attention, for the settlement of “Yerba Buena,” where we lay at anchor, made chiefly by Americans and English, and which bids fair to become the most important trading place on the coast, at this time began to supply traders, Russian ships, and whalers, with their stores of wheat and frijoles. [From p. 257]
Third, Dana walked the walk on this last one.
His is one of those cases which are more numerous than those suppose, who have never lived anywhere but in their own homes, and never walked but in one line from their cradles to their graves. We must come down from our heights, and leave our straight paths, for the by-ways and low places of life, if we would learn truths by strong contrasts; and in hovels, in forecastles, and among our own outcasts in foreign lands, see what has been wrought among our fellow-creatures by accident, hardship, or vice. [From p. 283]
The actual sea-faring was familiar after so many Hornblower and Aubrey-Maturin novels, though those focus on officers rather than normal seaman. Quite amazing what these men did as a matter of course. The modern world has its horrors and problems, but manual labor for months on end with four hours sleep where a single rogue wave can kill you… glad that’s (mostly?) in the past.
