a
long sea voyage. Refusing a berth offered him on a vessel bound for the
East Indies, he chose to go as common sailor before the mast, on a
merchantman starting on a two-years' trading voyage around Cape Horn to
California. At that time boys of good family from the New England coast
towns often took such trips. Dana indeed found a companion in a former
merchant's clerk of Boston. They left on August 14th, 1834, doubled Cape
Horn, spent many months in the waters of the Pacific and on the coast of
California, trading with the natives and taking in cargoes of hides, and
returned to Boston in September, 1836. Young Dana, entirely cured of his
weakness, re-entered college, graduated the next year, and then went to
study in the law school of Harvard. During his cruise he had kept a
journal, which he now worked over into the narrative that made him
famous, and that bids fair to keep his name alive as long as boys, young
or old, delight in sea stories. It is really not a story at all, but
describes with much vivacity the whole history of a long trading voyage,
the commonplace life of the sailor with its many hardships, including
the savage brutality of captains with no restraint on passion or
manners, and scant recreations; the sea in storm and calm, and the
California coast before the gold fever, when but few Europeans were
settled there, and hides were the chief export of a region whose riches
lay still secreted under the earth. The great charm of the narrative
lies in its simplicity and its frank statement of facts. Dana apparently
did not invent anything, but depicted real men, men he had intimately
known for two years, calling them even by their own names, and giving an
unvarnished account of what they did and said. He never hung back from
work or shirked his duty, but "roughed it" to the very end. As a result
of these experiences, this book is the only one that gives any true idea
of the sailor's life. Sea stories generally depend for their interest on
the inventive skill of their authors; Dana knew how to hold the
attention by a simple statement of facts. The book has all the charm and
spontaneity of a keenly observant yet imaginative and cultivated mind,
alive to all the aspects of the outer world, and gifted with that fine
literary instinct which, knowing the value of words, expresses its
thoughts with precision. Seafaring men have commented on his exactness
in reproducing the sailor's phraseology. The book was publishe