My Natural History is my diversion." That took two hours a day more.
The men used to bring him birds and fish, but on a long cruise he had
to satisfy himself with centipedes and cockroaches and such small
game. He was the only naturalist I ever met who knew anything about
the habits of the house-fly and the mosquito. All those people can
tell you whether they are _Lepidoptera_ or _Steptopotera_; but as for
telling how you can get rid of them, or how they get away from you
when you strike them--why Linnaeus knew as little of that as John Foy
the idiot did. These nine hours made Nolan's regular daily
"occupation." The rest of the time he talked or walked. Till he grew
very old, he went aloft a great deal. He always kept up his exercise;
and I never heard that he was ill. If any other man was ill, he was
the kindest nurse in the world; and he knew more than half the
surgeons do. Then if anybody was sick or died, or if the captain
wanted him to, on any other occasion, he was always ready to read
prayers. I have said that he read beautifully.
My own acquaintance with Philip Nolan began six or eight years after
the English war, on my first voyage after I was appointed a
midshipman. It was in the first days after our Slave-Trade treaty,
while the Reigning House, which was still the House of Virginia, had
still a sort of sentimentalism about the suppression of the horrors of
the Middle Passage, and something was sometimes done that way. We were
in the South Atlantic on that business.
Pages:
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234