The good humoured Dutch looking face is, however,
wanting; they have a savage angularity of feature, the effect of their
antisocial trade; one feels a sort of creeping horror on approaching a
fellow creature, armed at all points, in a lone and solemn place, the
haunts of desperate men, and on whose tongue an embargo is laid to speak
to no one, pacing the surly rocks, his hands on his arms, ready to deal
forth death on the first legal opportunity. Beings such as these an
amiable and delicate mind shudders to contemplate, and always finds it
difficult to conceive; yet, such are the preventive men who line our
coast--melancholy examples of the truth stated at the outset of this
paper. Occasionally, however, the good traveller will, much to his joy,
meet with an exception to this sad rule, in the person of an old
tar, whom necessity has pressed into the service, and who from long
acquaintance with the pleasures of traversing the mighty ocean, feels
little pleasure in staring at it like an inactive land-lubber, a
character which he holds in hearty contempt; besides, to fire at a
fellow Briton is against his nature; thief or no thief it crosses his
grain, and he looks at his pistols and hates himself.
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