Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas

ndiaman was wrecked, and of nearly two hundred souls but three or four were saved, and these were taken off after remaining upon the rocks some twelve days, without nourishment and exposed to all the horrors of starvation. Worse yet than that, deprived of shelter from a vertical sun, without water to restore the fluids which his fierce rays extracted from their parching bodies. An immense number of birds were flying over and around these jagged peaks, and who knows how greatly these may have added to the torture of the shipwrecked crew, when failing nature denied the power to protect themselves.

"Ah who can tell The looks men cast on famished men; The thoughts that came up there."

In the morning watch of the twenty-sixth of February, we "crossed the line" in longitude 29° 56' 50'' west, with such light breezes, that at meridian we had logged but 30' south. We escaped the usual visit of old Neptune upon entering the threshold of his dominions,--and as it was early morning, suppose th