It initiated me, even at the beginning of my sea-going career, into the most repulsive mysteries of a seaman's life.

And whenever, in subsequent voyages, I have been put upon poor diet, I mentally contrasted it with the wretched fare during my second voyage to sea, smacked my lips, and called it luxury.
Steering to the northward we passed near the Island of Sombrero, glided from the Caribbean Sea into the Atlantic Ocean, and wended our way towards the Carolinas.
Sombrero is an uninhabited island, a few miles only in circumference.
It offers to the dashing waves on every side a steep, craggy cliff, from thirty to fifty feet high.

Its surface is flat, and entirely destitute of vegetation; and at a distance, a fanciful imagination can trace, in the outline of the island, a faint resemblance to the broad Spanish hat, called a "sombrero," from which it takes its name.
This island, as well as all the other uninhabited islands in that part of the world, has ever been a favorite resort for birds, as gulls of several varieties, noddies, man-of-war birds, pelicans, and others.

It has recently been ascertained that Sombrero is entitled to the proud appellation of "a guano island," and a company has been organized, consisting of persons belonging to New England, for the purpose of carrying off its rich deposits, which are of a peculiarly valuable character, being found beneath a bed of coral limestone several feet in thickness, and must consequently possess all the advantages which antiquity can confer.
It was on this island, many years ago, that an English brig struck in a dark night, while "running down the trades." The officers and crew, frightened at the dashing of the breakers and the gloomy aspect of the rocks which frowned upon them from above, made their escape on shore in "double quick time," some of them marvellously thinly clad, even for a warm climate.

As soon as they had safely landed on the cliffs, and congratulated each other on their good fortune, the brig, by a heave of the sea, became disengaged from the rocks, and floating off, drifted to leeward, to the great mortification of the crew, and was fallen in with a day or two afterwards, safe and sound, near Anegada Reef, and carried into St.Thomas.The poor fellows, who manifested such alacrity in quitting "a sinking ship," suffered greatly from hunger and exposure.
They erected a sort of flagstaff, on which they displayed a jacket as a signal of distress, and in the course of a few days were taken off by an American vessel bound to Santa Cruz.
The feeling which prompts a person, in the event of a sudden danger at sea, to quit his own vessel and look abroad for safety, appears to be instinctive.