They
told me of thousands of beautiful, fertile islands that had been formed
by a small creature called the coral insect, where summer reigned
nearly all the year round; where the trees were laden with a constant
harvest of luxuriant fruit; where the climate was almost perpetually
delightful; yet where, strange to say, men were wild, bloodthirsty
savages, excepting in those favoured isles to which the Gospel of our
Saviour had been conveyed. These exciting accounts had so great an
effect upon my mind that, when I reached the age of fifteen, I resolved
to make a voyage to the South Seas.
I had no little difficulty at first in prevailing on my dear parents to
let me go; but when I urged on my father that he would never have
become a great captain had he remained in the coasting trade, he saw
the truth of what I said, and gave his consent. My dear mother, seeing
that my father had made up his mind, no longer offered opposition to my
wishes. "But oh, Ralph," she said, on the day I bade her adieu, "come
back soon to us, my dear boy, for we are getting old now, Ralph, and
may not have many years to live."
I will not take up my readers' time with a minute account of all that
occurred before I took my final leave of my dear parents. Suffice it to
say that my father placed me under the charge of an old messmate of his
own, a merchant captain, who was on the point of sailing to the South
Seas in his own ship, the _Arrow_.
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