ve been becalmed for some days within easy view of
it. All along are fine mountains, brown all day, and with a bloom on
them at sunset like that of a ripe plum. Here and there at their feet
little white towns are sprinkled along the edge of the water, like the
grains of rice dropped by the princess in the story. Sometimes we see
larger buildings on the mountain slopes, probably convents. I sit and
wonder whether the farther peaks may not be the Sierra Morena (the rusty
saw) of Don Quixote. I resolve that they shall be, and am content.
Surely latitude and longitude never showed me any particular respect,
that I should be over-scrupulous with them.

But after all, Nature, though she may be more beautiful, is nowhere so
entertaining as in man, and the best thing I have seen and learned at
sea is our Chief Mate. My first acquaintance with him was made over my
knife, which he asked to look at, and, after a critical examination,
handed back to me, saying, "I shouldn't wonder if that 'ere was a good
piece o' stuff." Since then he has transferred a part of his regard for
my knife to its owner. I like folks who like an honest bit of steel, and
take no interest whatever in "your Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff."
There is always more than the average human nature in the man who has a
hearty sympathy with iron. It is a manly metal, with no sordid
associations like gold and silver. My sailor fully came up to my
expectation on further acquaintance. He might well be called an old salt
who had been wrecked on Spitzbergen before I was born. He was not an
American, but I should never have guessed it by his speech, which was
the purest Cape Cod, and I reckon myself a good taster of dialects. Nor
was he less Americanized in all his thoughts and feelings, a singular
proof of the ease with which our omnivorous country assimilates foreign
matter, provided it be Protestant, for he was a man ere he became an
American citizen. He used to walk the deck with his hands in his
pockets, in seeming abstraction, but nothing escaped his eyes. _How_ he
saw I could never make out, though I had a theory that it was with his
elbows. After he had taken me (or my knife) into his confidence, he took
care that I should see whatever he deemed of interest to a landsman.
Without looking up, he would say, suddenly, "There's a whale blowin'
clearn up to win'ard," or, "Them's porpises to leeward: that means
change o' wind." He is as impervious to cold as a polar bear,