Raphael Semmes, Memoirs of Service Afloat During the War Between the States

[206] we stood north, until we had run the land out of sight, to give color to this idea, when we changed our course to E., half S. We ran along, for the next two or three days, on soundings, with a view to break the force of the current, doubling Cape Orange, on the 2d of September, and hauling more to the southward, with the trending of the coast. On the next day, we had regained the position from which we had been compelled to bear up, and my journal remarks:—‘We have thus lost three days and a half of steaming, or about fifty tons of coal, but what is worse, we have lost twenty-three days of valuable time,—but this time can scarcely be said to have been wholly lost, either, since the display of the flag of our young republic, in Cayenne and Paramaribo, has had a most excellent effect.’

Sept. 4th.—Weather fine, with a fresh breeze, from about E. by S. During most of the day, we have carried fore and aft sails, and have made an excellent run, for a dull ship—175 miles. We have experienced no current. We passed the mouths of the great Amazon, to-day, bearing on its bosom the waters of a continent. We were running along in the deepest and bluest of sea-water, whilst at no great distance from us, we could plainly perceive, through our telescopes, the turbid waters of the great stream, mixing and mingling, by slow degrees, with the ocean. Numerous tide rips marked the uncongenial meeting of the waters, and the sea-gull and penguin were busy diving in them, as though this neutral ground, or rather I should say, battle-ground, was a favorite resort for the small fish, on which they prey. A drift log with sedate water-fowl seated upon it, would now and then come along, and schools of porpoises were disporting themselves, now in the blue, now in the muddy waters. Unlike the mouths of the Mississippi, there were no white sails of commerce dotting the waters, in the offing, and no giant tow-boats throwing their volumes of black smoke into the air, and, with their huge side-wheels, beating time to the pulsations of the steam-engine. All was nature. The giant stream ran through a wilderness, scarcely yet opened to civilization. It disembogues a little south of the equator, and runs from west to east, nearly entirely across the continent.