Book Description:
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PREFACE. The following narrative originally appeared in ' Graham's Magazine' in the years 1839 and '40. The popularity which it then enjoyed, and the inquiry for it subsequently, has induced the author to issue it in its present form. The ten years which have elasped since its serial publication, have suggested various improvements, so that parts of it have been re written; but the plot itself, for manifest reasons, has been left altogether unaltered. Indeed, only partial changes were allowable; for the main incidents of the cruise are strictly true; and any alteration, that was more than verbal, would of course have violated veracity. The author has now before him a thick MS. volume, entitled ' Journal on board the Private Armed Brig Yankee, in 1812,' and it is scarcely necessary to add that from this journal the present work has been compiled. If any captious critic, therefore, should call in question parts of the narrative, the author has no defence to make, except to say, with another, ' What is written, is written.' As there may be persons still surviving,'who took part in some of these incidents, the author has adopted fictitious names generally for his characters. Those wao remember the actors, or any of them, in the scenes described, will know where this rule has been adhered to and where violated. It has been thought best to adhere to the original title of 'Cruising in the Last War,' though the war with Mexico has since made this, critically speaking, a misnomer. chapter Section 4CKUISING THE LAST WAR. CHAPTER I. O, the cry did knock Against my very heart! Poor souls! they perished. Had I been any god of power, I would Have sunk the sea within the earth, or e'er It should the good ship so have swallowed, and The freighted souls within her. Th...
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