ands--islands of
which some curious myths are told of wild white races far in the
interior; of spirits haunting mountain-side and vale; volcanoes,
in a lowering cloud of sulphurous smoke; narrows, and wave-lashed
promontories, where the ships can not cross in the night; great mounds
of foliage that tower in silence hardly a stone's throw from the ship,
like some wild feature of a dream,--such are the characteristics of
the archipelago.

The grandeur of the scenery, the tempered winds, the sense of being
alone in an untraveled wilderness, made up in part for the discomforts
of the _Romulus_. The tropical sunsets, staining the sky until the
whole west was a riot of color, fiery red and gold; the false dawn,
and the sunrise breaking the ramparts of dissolving cloud; the
moonlight on the waters, where the weird beams make a shimmering
path that leads away across the planet waste to _terra incognita_,
or to some dank sea-cave where the sirens sing,--this is a day and
a night upon the summer seas.

At night, as the black prow goes pushing through the phosphorescent
waters, porpoises of solid silver, puffing desperately, tumble about
the bows, or dive down underneath the rushing hull. The surging
waves are billows of white fire. In the electric moonlight the blue
mountains, more mysterious than ever, stand out in bold relief. What
restless tribes of savages are wandering now through the trackless
forests, sleeping in lofty trees, or in some scanty shelter amid the
tangled underbrush! The light that flickers in the distant gorge,
perchance illumines some religious orgy--some impassioned dance of
primitive and pagan men. What spirits are abroad to-night, invoked at
savage altars by the incantations of the savage priests--spirits of
trees and rivers emanating from the hidden shrines of an almighty
one! Or it may be that the light comes from an isolated leper
settlement, where the unhappy mortals spend in loneliness their
dreary lives.

On the first trip of the _Romulus_ I was assigned to a small, mildewed,
stuffy cabin, where the unsubstantial, watery roaches played at
hide-and-seek around the wash-stand and the floor. It was a splendid
night to sleep on deck; and so, protected from the stiff breeze by the
flapping canvas, on an army cot which the _muchacho_ had stretched out,
I went to sleep, my thoughts instinctively running into verse:

"The wind was just as steady, and the vessel tumbled more,
But the waves we