Boston. It might be Miss Harriet Elkins who requested the master
of the Messenger "please to purchase at Calcutta two net beads
with draperies; if at Batavia or any spice market, nutmegs or
mace; or if at Canton, two Canton shawls of the enclosed colors
at $5 per shawl. Enclosed is $10."

Again, it might be Mr. John R. Tucker who ventured in the same
ship one hundred Spanish dollars to be invested in coffee and
sugar, or Captain Nathaniel West who risked in the Astrea fifteen
boxes of spermaceti candles and a pipe of Teneriffe wine. It is
interesting to discover what was done with Mr. Tucker's hundred
Spanish dollars, as invested for him by the skipper of the
Messenger at Batavia and duly accounted for. Ten bags of coffee
were bought for $83.30, the extra expenses of duty, boat-hire,
and sacking bringing the total outlay to $90.19. The coffee was
sold at Antwerp on the way home for $183.75, and Mr. Tucker's
handsome profit on the adventure was therefore $93.56, or more
than one hundred per cent.

It was all a grand adventure, in fact, and the word was aptly
chosen to fit this ocean trade. The merchant freighted his ship
and sent her out to vanish from his ken for months and months of
waiting, with the greater part of his savings, perhaps, in goods
and specie beneath her hatches. No cable messages kept him in
touch with her nor were there frequent letters from the master.
Not until her signal was displayed by the fluttering flags of the
headland station at the harbor mouth could he know whether he had
gained or lost a fortune. The spirit of such merchants was
admirably typified in the last venture of Elias Hasket Derby in
1798, when unofficial war existed between the United States and