CHAPTER XXIV.
INTRODUCTORY TO CAPE HORN.
And now, through drizzling fogs and vapours, and under damp, double-reefed top-sails, our wet-decked frigate drew nearer and nearer to the squally Cape.
Who has not heard of it?
Cape Horn, Cape Horn--a _horn_ indeed, that has tossed many a good ship.

Was the descent of Orpheus, Ulysses, or Dante into Hell, one whit more hardy and sublime than the first navigator's weathering of that terrible Cape?
Turned on her heel by a fierce West Wind, many an outward-bound ship has been driven across the Southern Ocean to the Cape of Good Hope--_that_ way to seek a passage to the Pacific.

And that stormy Cape, I doubt not, has sent many a fine craft to the bottom, and told no tales.

At those ends of the earth are no chronicles.

What signify the broken spars and shrouds that, day after day, are driven before the prows of more fortunate vessels?
or the tall masts, imbedded in icebergs, that are found floating by?
They but hint the old story--of ships that have sailed from their ports, and never more have been heard of.
Impracticable Cape! You may approach it from this direction or that--in any way you please--from the East or from the West; with the wind astern, or abeam, or on the quarter; and still Cape Horn is Cape Horn.
Cape Horn it is that takes the conceit out of fresh-water sailors, and steeps in a still salter brine the saltest.