CHAPTER IV.

--Seventhly, Before his Voyage, He should make his peace with God,

satisfie his Creditors if he be in debt; Pray earnestly to God to prosper

him in his Voyage, and to keep him from danger, and, if he be 'sui juris'

he should make his last will, and wisely order all his affairs, since

many that go far abroad, return not home. (This good and Christian

Counsel is given by Martinus Zeilerus in his Apodemical Canons before his

Itinerary of Spain and Portugal.)

Early in the morning Squire Hawkins took passage in a small steamboat,

with his family and his two slaves, and presently the bell rang, the

stage-plank; was hauled in, and the vessel proceeded up the river.

The children and the slaves were not much more at ease after finding out

that this monster was a creature of human contrivance than they were the

night before when they thought it the Lord of heaven and earth. They

started, in fright, every time the gauge-cocks sent out an angry hiss,

and they quaked from head to foot when the mud-valves thundered. The

shivering of the boat under the beating of the wheels was sheer misery to

them.

But of course familiarity with these things soon took away their terrors,

and then the voyage at once became a glorious adventure, a royal progress

through the very heart and home of romance, a realization of their

rosiest wonder-dreams. They sat by the hour in the shade of the pilot

The Gilded Age