ABSTRACT
As we were sitting by the river this afternoon watching the inhabitants coming clown to perform their religious ablutions and say their prayers, we were accosted by an ancient mariner, a venerable looking man, with a long white beard and the remains of a green turban on his head. He greeted us gravely, but in a rather singular fashion, with the words " Starboard, port, goddam," and went on to explain that he knew our language, having served in Colonel Chesney's expedition forty years before. He asked with much feeling after the various officers then employed on the survey, and appeared touched at the news that his commander was still alive. He then went down
the bank to the river, as we thought to wash like the others, so that our conversation with him was interrupted, and when we looked for him again he had disappeared. Whether he was the ghost of one of those drowned in the hurricane of 1836, or, as is more likely, had simply swum across the river without our noticing it, I cannot say, but his disappearance struck us as mysterious.
