Whaling Literature. Whaling Life. of J. R. Browne, called "Etchings of a Whaling Cruise," and in a volume entitled "Incidents of a Whaling Voyage, by F. A. Olmsted." Without superseding or conflicting with either of those entertaining books, the course pursued in the present volume is an independent one, whereby it is aimed to finish the complement of whaling literature, and supply what was wanting, in order to put the reading public in possession of a full-length portraiture of the whaleman as seen in the actual pursuit and garb of his perilous occupation. Personal narrative and incident, other than what bears directly upon this, are therefore omitted, together with those minute descriptions of whaling implements, outfits, modes, customs, and seausages to be found elsewhere. Neither does it enter into our purpose to portray a sailor's life and manners in the forecastle or before the mast, alow or aloft, for this is a department of marine literature in which books are so numerous, both in the form of the novel and the sea journal, that little remains to be told. In adventures, however, almost every whaleman's voyage is an original, certainly so to himself. We begin, therefore, at once, with the peculiar Homeward Ho! Propitious Omens. lights and shadows of a homeward cruise in the Pacific and Atlantic, from the Sandwich Islands to Boston, in the good ship Commodore Preble, Captain Lafayette Ludlow. In a voyage of two hundred and thirty-six days there will always be lights and shadows, good and evil, pleasures and displeasures, interlocking one another. To the author the comforts of this long voyage far exceeded its discomforts, by the constant blessing of Providence, making it eminently conducive to the recovery of health, and through the personal kindness of a skillful captain and esteemed friend. Would that every wanderer in quest of health could be cheerfully returning homeward under circumstances as favorable! Now, little book, with prosperous tide and gale, THE Preble is as she is lying off and on the lone island of Rimatara, in quest of the fresh supplies which whalemen covet in order to keep at bay the scurvy. This is one of those fascinating South Sea Islands, which, on their first discovery by Europeans in the latter part of the last century, quite turned the heads of many, and at once started so much speculative nonsense and sentimentality about primeval innocence and bliss embosomed in the Pacific. A coral rock, by gentle Nature made Verdant and beautiful, through tropic sun, |