Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free.This is an OCR edition with typos.Excerpt from book:CHAPTER II VOYAGE TO NOOTKA SOUND On the third day of September, 1802, we sailed from the Downs with a fair wind, in company with twenty- four sail of American vessels, most of which were bound home. I was sea-sick for a few of the first days, but it was of short continuance, and on my recovery I found myself in uncommonly fine health and spirits, and went to work with alacrity at my forge, in putting in order some of the muskets, and making daggers, knives, and small hatchets for the Indian trade, while in wet and stormy weather I was occupied below in filing and polishing them. This was my employment, having but little to do with sailing the vessel, though I used occasionally to lend a hand in assisting the seamen in taking in and making sail. As I had never before been out of sight of land, I cannot describe my sensations, after I had recovered from the distressing effects of sea-sickness, on viewing the mighty ocean by which I was surrounded, bound only by the sky, while its waves, rising in mountains, seemed every moment to threaten our ruin. Manifest as is the hand of Providence in preserving its creatures from destruction, in no instance is it more sothan on the great deep; for whether we consider in its tumultuary motions the watery deluge that each moment menaces to overwhelm us, the immense violence of its shocks, the little that interposes between us and death, a single plank forming our only security, which, should it unfortunately be loosened, would plunge us at once into the abyss, our gratitude ought strongly to be excited towards that superintending Deity who in so wonderful a manner sustains our lives amid the waves. We had a pleasant and favourable passage of twenty- nine days to the Island of St. Catherine,1 on the coast of Brazils, where the captai...