red into the American
clouds of the West. We are only a thousand miles away from the solid,
sugary sweet, redolent, ripe American soil, and if there is anything
the matter we do not mind, why we will just take a boat and pull
ashore." But we would have had a hard time if the Captain had taken
us up in the flush of the hilarity that laughed at a thousand miles,
when the breeze brought us the faint first hints that we were almost
home, after a voyage of five thousand leagues. The wind shifted to
the south and increased until it roared, and the waves were as iron
tipped with blue and silver, hurling their salty crests over our
towering ship; and we were in the grasp--

On the Pacific of the terrific
Storm King of the Equinox.

Mr. Longfellow mentioned the storm wind gigantic, that shook the
Atlantic at the time of the equinox--the one that urges the boiling
surges bearing seaweed from the rocks; and all those disappointed
because they had not bounded on the billows of the briny enough for
healthy exercises, were satisfied in the reception by the tremendous
Pacific when nigh the shore, which was once the western boundary,
but is so no more, of that blessed America, of which her sons grow
fonder the farther they roam. God's country, as the boys and girls
call it reverently, when they are sailing the seas, was veiled from
us in a fog that blanketed the deep. For five thousand miles our ship
had been in a remorseless solitude. No voice had come to us; no spark
of intelligence from the universe touched us, save from the stars and
the sun, but at the hour of the night, and the point of the compass,
our navigator had foretold, we should hear the deep-throated horn on
Reyes point--it came to us out of the gloomy abyss--and science had
not failed. Across the trackless waste we had been guided aright,
and there was music the angels might have envied in the hoarse notes
of the fog-horn that welcomed the wanderers home.

CHAPTER XXIV

Our Picture Gallery.

Annotations and Illustrations--Portraits of Heroes of the War in the
Army and Navy, and of the Highest Public Responsibilities--Admirals
and Generals, the President and Cabinet--Photographs of Scenes
and Incidents--The Characteristics of the Filipinos--Their Homes,
Dresses and Peculiarities in Sun Pictures--The Picturesque People of
Our New Possessions.

The portrait of President McKinley is from the photograph that seems to
his friends upon the whole the most strikin