"The dime-museum symptoms will drop in of themselves, I guess, to keep us cheery." But it appeared we were at the end of discoveries for the day; and we left the brig about sundown, without being further puzzled or further enlightened.

The best of the cabin spoils--books, instruments, papers, silks, and curiosities--we carried along with us in a blanket, however, to divert the evening hours; and when supper was over, and the table cleared, and Johnson set down to a dreary game of cribbage between his right hand and his left, the captain and I turned out our blanket on the floor, and sat side by side to examine and appraise the spoils.
The books were the first to engage our notice.

These were rather numerous (as Nares contemptuously put it) "for a lime-juicer." Scorn of the British mercantile marine glows in the breast of every Yankee merchant captain; as the scorn is not reciprocated, I can only suppose it justified in fact; and certainly the old country mariner appears of a less studious disposition.

The more credit to the officers of the Flying Scud, who had quite a library, both literary and professional.

There were Findlay's five directories of the world--all broken-backed, as is usual with Findlay, and all marked and scribbled over with corrections and additions--several books of navigation, a signal code, and an Admiralty book of a sort of orange hue, called _Islands of the Eastern Pacific Ocean, Vol.