We were employed the whole afternoon in conveying our booty to the boat. After working hard all the morning, we found little romance in carrying one or two hundred oranges, in bags, on our heads, over the hot yielding sand; and there was a general exclamation of satisfaction when the last load came heavily down to the beach. We reached the ship long after sundown, and bid a final farewell to Rio the next morning.
My quiet room-mate went with us no farther. He was disheartened by the length of the voyage, and perhaps thought Brazil presented quite as many advantages as California. His place was filled by a young, red-haired Scotchman, who had formerly lived in Edinburgh, and sat on the knee of Sir Walter. He had been on one or two whaling voyages, and had evidently seen the world. He played on the guitar--sang a variety of songs, some of which were of a very doubtful character--was an expert boxer--had something of a turn for poetry and light literature--and, in spite of his unsettled, wandering life, still possessed, to an unusual degree, that sort of native refinement that makes one tender of the feelings and weaknesses of others. He seemed, however, to value these various accomplishments only as passports to the favour of the other sex. His successes in that line had been very numerous, according to his own showing, and had confirmed him in the belief that there was no such thing as virtue in the world.
On leaving port, we plunged at once into the region of storms. The tropic of Capricorn seemed an actual wall of separation, dividing two distinct climates as smoothly and evenly as it does the zones upon the map. On one side, all was bright and serene; on the other, cloudy and tempestuous. Off the mouth of the La Platte, the mariner is sure to encounter heavy seas, as if there floated down that magnificent river, from its mountain birthplace, nothing but miniature Andes to encumber the smooth surface of the deep. Day after day we climbed up and down these hills, as slowly and painfully as a man walking over a ploughed field. We gained, seemingly, not a foot; and I sometimes thought we were to remain there forever seesawing the same dull wave. Every morning we found ourselves apparently just where we were the night before; the same ill-looking wave on our quarter, the same dirty cloud over head. Drive as hard as we could, there was no getting away from them; they still, like the headless horseman, preserved the same relative position.