Having fixed upon this, I hired a little bark to Jubo, a place about forty leagues distant from Pate, on board which I put some provisions, together with my sacerdotal vestments, and all that was necessary for saying mass: in this vessel we reached the
coast, which we found inhabited by several nations: each nation is subject to its own king; these petty monarchies are so numerous, that I counted at least ten in less than four leagues.
They made a detour about the hostile village, and resumed their journey toward the
coast.
We passed along the Arabian
coast of Mahrah and Hadramaut, for a distance of six miles, its undulating line of mountains being occasionally relieved by some ancient ruin.
During the day she kept along the
coast, where the currents were favourable; the
coast, irregular in profile, and visible sometimes across the clearings, was at most five miles distant.
My brother, very luckily for him as it chanced, pre- ferred to push on at once to the
coast rather than wait for food, although all three of them were very hungry.
Without having been in the school of the Abbe Faria, the worthy master of The Young Amelia (the name of the Genoese tartan) knew a smattering of all the tongues spoken on the shores of that large lake called the Mediterranean, from the Arabic to the Provencal, and this, while it spared him interpreters, persons always troublesome and frequently indiscreet, gave him great facilities of communication, either with the vessels he met at sea, with the small boats sailing along the
coast, or with the people without name, country, or occupation, who are always seen on the quays of seaports, and who live by hidden and mysterious means which we must suppose to be a direct gift of providence, as they have no visible means of support.
The sufferings of the travellers among these savage mountains were extreme: for a part of the time they were nearly starved; at length, they made their way through them, and came down upon the plains of New California, a fertile region extending along the
coast, with magnificent forests, verdant savannas, and prairies that looked like stately parks.
A ship may have left her port some time before; she may have been at sea, in the fullest sense of the phrase, for days; but, for all that, as long as the
coast she was about to leave remained in sight, a southern-going ship of yesterday had not in the sailor's sense begun the enterprise of a passage.
WHILE the various companies we have noticed were pushing their enterprises far and wide in the wilds of Canada, and along the course of the great western waters, other adventurers, intent on the same objects, were traversing the watery wastes of the Pacific and skirting the northwest
coast of America.
From Genoa the run to Leghorn will be made along the
coast in one night, and time appropriated to this point in which to visit Florence, its palaces and galleries; Pisa, its cathedral and "Leaning Tower," and Lucca and its baths, and Roman amphitheater; Florence, the most remote, being distant by rail about sixty miles.
This island, lying near to the eastern
coast of Africa, is in the sixth degree of south latitude, that is to say, four hundred and thirty geographical miles below the equator.
Sure enough, dead ahead, a long, low
coast stretched across our bow.
