828 H3257m 1835 v.2.

Hart, Joseph C.

MIRIAM COFFIN,

30927

OR

THE WHALE-FISHERMEN.

A TALE.

While we follow them amid the tumbling mountains of ice, and behold them penetrating into the
deepest frozen recesses of Hudson's Bay and Davis's Straits-while we are looking for them between the
Arctic Circle, we hear that they have pierced into the opposite region of Polar cold-that they are at the
antipodes, and engaged under the frozen Serpent of the South. Falkland Island, which seemed too remote
and romantic an object for the grasp of national ambition, is but a stage and resting-place in the progress of
their victorious industry. Nor is the Equinoctial heat more discouraging to them than the accumulated
winter of both the Poles. We know, that while some of them draw the line and strike the harpoon on the
coast of Africa, others run the longitude, and pursue their gigantic game along the coast of Brazil. No sea
but what is vexed by their fisheries-no climate that is not witness to their unceasing toils!

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. II.

SECOND EDITION.

Edmund Burke.

NEW YORK:

PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS,

NO. 82 CLIFF-STREET,

AND SOLD BY THE PRINCIPAL BOOKSELLERS THROUGHOUT THE
UNITED STATES.

18 35.

[Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1835, by HARPER & BROTHERS, in the Clerk's Office of the Southern District of New-York.]

MIRIAM COFFIN,

OR

THE WHALE-FISHERMEN.

CHAPTER I.

Now art thou my lieutenant!

SHAKSPEARE.

THERE are but few women of perception who are unable to estimate their own attractions, and to set a just value upon their power. Personal vanity, to be sure, is frequently betrayed to excess, in the exhibition of the thousand little arts to which females resort to catch the eyes, or to rivet the chains, about the hearts of the men; but most women know the best way of managing these things, and how to adorn themselves for conquest. It is a lamentable truth, however, that many of the gentler sex draw off their light artillery at a time when it behooves them to play their engines most skilfully, and to keep up a constant and well-directed fire. How truly this may be exemplified, the attentive observer may determine for himself, by looking into the conduct of most females after marriage. The bright eyes and wreathed smiles of the maid, when she met her lover, are changed to lacklustre orbs and forbidding soberness in the matron towards the husband; and at times, to pouting peevishness, or dinning invective. The bless