Page:Twenty years before the mast - Charles Erskine, 1896.djvu/56

 from the stem of the plant as if from a little handle, while drop after drop fell from its mouth.

While in this port we received a letter-bag from home by a ship just from New York. Bill Roberts, a Boston boy, got two letters and read them to me. It made me feel badly to hear them, and I asked him if he could  write. "Why, I wrote home just before we sailed from Old Point Comfort, and then again from Madeira," said  he. Without saying another word, I went down to the berth deck into the yeoman’s storeroom, and told him  that I wanted to learn to write. He made some straight marks and some that were not straight on a piece of  paper, and told me to copy them in ship-shape fashion. I did copy them every chance I got. Finally I began to think it very silly to continue making those straight  marks, so I asked the yeoman one day to write as plainly  as he could the word "mother," which he did. I went to work copying, and covered many fathoms of paper  with that precious name.

The palace of the Emperor Dom Pedro was in full view from our ship. The fact that it was a palace was the only thing that recommended it to passing notice. It was opposite the only landing for boats on the beach. On the emperor’s birthday all the ships in the harbor were decorated with flags, and at twelve o’clock, noon,  twenty-one guns were fired in honor of his attained  majority.

The streets of Rio Janeiro are long and very narrow. Like those of all Spanish and Portuguese towns, they are also very filthy. The poorer classes are indeed poor, while the condition of the slaves is pitiable. They are