old Virginia clay, as elsewhere.

In May, 1864, I

received a severe wound from a rebel bullet in the hip, temporarily incapacitating me from pursuing the fortunes of my regiment. I had to go to hospital with it, and after a protracted siege of some months' duration so far recovered as to be able to rejoin my comrades in the field, where I remained, with more or less inconvenience from it, and without having received any more douceurs from the foe until the termination of hostilities. Then being disbanded as a regiment, we all got honorable discharges, which secured for us warm welcomes from the dear ladies, who feasted us on our return, both with their smiles and their more material blessings. Can I ever forget that time? Never! But it passed, and so have many of our number since.

My wound proved to be not so easily cured as cicatrized. It frequently since has broken out anew, and was an indirect cause to which my loss of vision is to be attributed; for, obliged by it to repair to a Chilian hospital when sailing in the South seas, I there caught the small-pox, and from that it came about that I lost one eye, and by sympathy almost the other, seeing now with one eye dimly as if looking through a cake of snow. For this wound I am in receipt of a Government pension, but small and quite inadequate

for support, and only intended to cover the partial loss of power by the slight hurt.

After the war was over I resumed my occupation as a compositor, so long relinquished, in my native town, and for a time managed to plow quietly along, and apparently very patiently, in the old rut. But a lust for adventure had now been enkindled and a desire for roving had been awakened within me, which could not be smothered or lulled to sleep. Excitement had been, for so long, a tree under whose shadow I had been accustomed to stretch my faculties, that after a brief time of repose I was perfectly unable to check a desire to camp again beneath it, or resist the temptation of plucking its fruit, even if I had to make great leaps to reach it, or was compelled to wander in far distant prospects after it. As I strolled through the dull inane avenues of my half rustic home siren voices seemed calling me far thence. As I pursued the humdrum of my business visions of vagabond enjoyment seemed beckoning me away into foreign lands and into unwonted occupations. By day reverie threw a cloud before my fancies on which their delights were depicted; by night dreams lit up panoramas where they were all but realized. Then I determined "to see the

world."

With this end in view I resigned my situation

at home to occupy one of a similar character in the oil regions of Pennsylvania. Thence after a while, I departed for the great cities of the East; and New York, and Boston, with their suburban excrescences became by times my places of residence, working in them as a journeyman printer. But the life, though agreeable as one in which a taste for travel could be indulged, was too tame. It palled upon my spice-loving palate. I had not what I longed for of excitement and novelty; and to procure these grand desiderata I at last exchanged my position as a "poor but honest" printer in "an alley" for that of a jolly tar before the mast-my quiet life as a compositor for one "on the ocean wave." Away I prepared to hie from the little New England port of New London, for Greenland, or the North Pole, in a hunt after whales, or any more stirring game that might turn up.

REAL B
COR. LA

PICE.
T

EL..

CHAPTER I.

THE START.

Clear and exhilirating was the air, blue and speckless the sky, calm and glassy the water, amid and on which joy seemed bounding before us, as one morning early in May, 186-, I chimed in my best pulmonic efforts with the stentorian chorus rendered by the throng heaving anchor on board the schooner "F," of New London, Connecticut, as she left that port for an eighteen months' or two years' cruise-as the case might prove itself to the western coast of Greenland after a cargo of whale-oil and whalebone.

I shipped on her as an hand before the mast with an allowance such as is usual in most vessels, or all making long voyages, in the shape of an advance for outfit, etc., the same to be deducted from my share of the profits-if any--when the vessel returned to port. This is the way whalers are run-the owners first securing what they agree in considering good dividends for the capital invested, and dividing, at unequal rates, the