9th.--There is no change in the wind, yet the gentlemen have all brightened
up, taken off their handkerchiefs and shaved, as if ashamed of their six
days' impatience, and making up their minds to a sea-life. This morning we
saw land; a long, low ridge of hills on the island of Eleuthera, where they
make salt, and where there are many negroes. Neither salt nor negroes
visible to the naked eye; nothing but the gray outline of the hills,
melting into the sea and sky; and having tacked about all day, we found
ourselves in the evening precisely opposite to this same island. There are
Job's comforters on board, who assure us that they have been thirty-six
days between New York and la "joya mas preciosa de la corona de Espana."[1]

[Footnote 1: The most precious jewel in the Spanish crown, the name given
to Cuba.]

For my part, I feel no impatience, having rather a dislike to changing my
position when tolerable, and the air is so fresh and laden with balm, that
it seems to blow over some paradise of sweets, some land of fragrant
spices. The sea also is a mirror, and I have read Marryat's "Pirate" for
the first time.

Thus then we stand at eight o'clock, P.M.; wind ahead, and little of it,
performing a zigzag march between Eleuthera and Abaco. On deck, the pretty
widow lies in an easy chair, surrounded by her countrymen, who discourse
about sugar, molasses, chocolate, and other local topics, together with the
relative merits of Cuba as compared with the rest of the known world.
Madame A---- is studying her part of Elizabetta in the opera of Roberto
Devereux, which she is to bring out in Havana, but the creaking of the
Norma is sadly at variance with harmony. A pale German youth, in
dressing-gown and slippers, is studying Schiller. An ingenious youngster is
carefully conning a well-thumbed note, which looks like a milliner's girl's