There is something peculiarly soothing in this scene--something in the soft light of the heavens, and in the dark and dimly-seen ocean, that induces a pleasing melancholy, a pensive tranquillity; the low, gentle murmuring of the waves calms the mind, tranquillizes its angry passions and boisterous feelings, and brings on those dreamy reveries that contemplative people are so fond of indulging. It is then, when the "grim-visaged" ocean has "smoothed his wrinkled front,"--when the winds of heaven are hushed to gentle airs, and the cloudless moon looks down upon the scene, tipping the crests of the lazy waves with silver,--that the memory and imagination of the wanderer are busy; it is then that the scenes of childhood and of manhood--the forms of friends, more loved because sundered from them by thousands of miles of water and land--all rise before him in original freshness and beauty.
Isabella also proposed to her lover to accompany him in his middle watch--that is, from midnight to four in the morning--but I grieve to say, that she proved worse on these occasions than an old man-of-war's man, not only "standing two calls," but, in fact, not "turning out" at all. She made some amends, however, by coming on deck at four o'clock frequently, to witness that splendid spectacle, sunrise at sea, which is particularly glorious between the tropics, not only on account of the extreme purity of the air, but from the shortness of the morning twilight; the sun rushing so suddenly from his salt water couch, as to come "within one" of catching the stars napping.
On arriving at Macao, Isabella was doomed to undergo another separation from her beloved Morton, whose qualities of head and heart she had had sufficient opportunities of studying and appreciating during the voyage from Mexico, and in the daily and familiar intercourse of a merchant-ship's cabin. As the Chinese eschew the society of foreign women even more rigorously than the children of Israel did that of "strange" ones--and, taking this notion of theirs "by and large" in connection with their laws, and manners, and tastes, we think they are perfectly right--Isabella was consequently landed at Macao, and placed in the care of a venerable and highly respectable Portuguese family, and after having arranged the means of as regular a correspondence as could be carried on in that country, where there are not quite so many mail-coaches and post-offices as with us, she saw with tearful eyes the whale-boat "shove off," containing in its stern-sheets Morton, a Chinese custom-house mandarin, two Chinese pigs, a hind-quarter of Chinese beef, a Chinese river pilot, and sundry baskets of Chinese fowls and vegetables.