uliar service, a larger vessel, and one of a light proportionate
draught, is desirable--say a vessel of from three hundred to three
hundred and fifty tons. She should be bark-rigged, and in other respects
of a different construction from the usual South Sea ships. It is
absolutely necessary that she should be well armed. She should have, say
ten or twelve twelve-pound carronades, and two or three long twelves,
with brass blunderbusses, and water-tight arm-chests for each top. Her
anchors and cables should be of far greater strength than is required
for any other species of trade, and, above all, her crew should be
numerous and efficient--not less, for such a vessel as I have described,
than fifty or sixty able-bodied men. The Jane Guy had a crew of
thirty-five, all able seamen, besides the captain and mate, but she
was not altogether as well armed or otherwise equipped, as a navigator
acquainted with the difficulties and dangers of the trade could have
desired.

Captain Guy was a gentleman of great urbanity of manner, and of
considerable experience in the southern traffic, to which he had devoted
a great portion of his life. He was deficient, however, in energy, and,
consequently, in that spirit of enterprise which is here so absolutely
requisite. He was part owner of the vessel in which he sailed, and was
invested with discretionary powers to cruise in the South Seas for any
cargo which might come most readily to hand. He had on board, as usual
in such voyages, beads, looking-glasses, tinder-works, axes, hatchets,
saws, adzes, planes, chisels, gouges, gimlets, files, spokeshaves,
rasps, hammers, nails, knives, scissors, razors, needles, thread,
crockery-ware, calico, trinkets, and other similar articles.

The schooner sailed from Liverpool on the tenth of July, crossed the
Tropic of Cancer on the twenty-fifth, in longitude twenty degrees west,
and reached Sal, one of the Cape Verd islands, on the twenty-ninth,
where she took in salt and other necessaries for the voyage. On
the third of August, she left the Cape Verds and steered southwest,
stretching over toward the coast of Brazil, so as to cross the equator
between the meridians of twenty-eight and thirty degrees west longitude.
This is the course usually taken by vessels bound from Europe to the
Cape of Good Hope, or by that route to the East Indies. By proceeding
thus they avoid the calms and strong contrary currents which continually
prevail on the coast of Guine