ed, leaving me in a weak
and wretched condition. This proved to be a case of intermittent fever,
or FEVER AND AGUE, a distressing malady, but little known in New England
in modern times, although by no means a stranger to the early settlers.
It was fastened upon me with a rough and tenacious grasp, by the damp,
foggy, chilly atmosphere in which I had constantly lived for the last
fortnight.

Next morning, in good season, the captain and mate were on board. The
wind was fair, and we got under weigh doubled Cape Cod, and arrived
alongside the T Wharf in Boston, after a tedious and uncomfortable
passage of twenty-two days from Savannah.

I left my home a healthy-looking boy, with buoyant spirits, a bright
eye, and features beaming with hope. A year had passed, and I stood
on the wharf in Boston, a slender stripling, with a pale and sallow
complexion, a frame attenuated by disease, and a spirit oppressed by
disappointment. The same day I deposited my chest in a packet bound to
Portsmouth, tied up a few trifling articles in a handkerchief, shook
hands with the worthy Captain Burgess, his mate and kind-hearted crew,
and with fifteen silver dollars in my pocket, wended my way to the stage
tavern in Ann Street, and made arrangements for a speedy journey to my
home in Rockingham County, New Hampshire.

Chapter XI. EMBARKING FOR BRAZIL.

It seemed to be generally conceded that I had got enough of the sea;
that after the discomforts I had experienced, and the unpleasant and
revolting scenes I had witnessed, I should manifest folly in trying
another voyage. My friends took it for granted that in my eyes a ship
had lost all her attractions, and that I would henceforth eschew salt
water as zealously and devoutly as a thrice-holy monk is wont to eschew
the vanities of the world.

Indeed, for a time I reluctantly acknowledged that I had seen enough of
a sailor's life; that on trial it did not realize my expectations; that
if not a decided humbug, it was amazingly like one. With my health the
buoyancy of my spirits departed. Hope and ambition no longer urged
me with irresistible power to go forth and visit foreign lands,
and traverse unknown seas like a knight errant of old in quest of
adventures. While shivering with ague, and thinking of my wretched fare
on board the schooner John, and my uncomfortable lodgings during the
passage from Savannah, I listened, with patience at least, to the
suggestions of my friends about a ch