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years before the American transcontinental railroad is completed. California is a backwater; San Diego "a smug little place," San Francisco consists of "one board shanty," and the Pilgrim, running back and forth along the coast from one ram-shackle settlement to the next, is nothing less than a traveling supermarket. She has brought all sorts of knick-knacks from Boston, and what she wants in return is hides. Dana must help to ferry customers back and forth between the land and the ship, and he must tan and transport hides, spending weeks ashore in such miserable pursuits, because it is all part of a sailor's life. Through it all, Dana is an attentive, interested observer, describing wares, dress, customs, architecture, and speech along the coast. He is the only one of his crew to quickly master Spanish, and becomes a translator for the ship.

Twenty-four years later he returns and marvels at what he sees: the little shanty towns have become large cities, California has become the 31st state, and Dana is a passenger on a steam ship. He feels a sad nostalgia for his time before the mast, but how can he be longing for those hardships and humiliations? Perhaps he is really longing for the loss of his youth. In that, I greatly differ from him. I have absolutely no regrets for the loss of my youth. The further I get away from those years, the better, and may they all be damned to oblivion! Even now, when someone asks me how old I am, I always make the same mistake that I have been making for decades. Instead of saying that my age is 69, I say 70, and then I stop short, realizing that I am still not 70 and feeling an intolerable impatience.

Dana has become a passionate defender of the rights of sailors and runaway slaves. He is a gifted lawyer who dabbles in politics with varying success. Among his friends and colleagues he counts Emerson, Dickens, Longfellow, Melville, Thackeray, Lowell, Agassiz, Lincoln, Grant, and many others. His Elements of International Law is the standard American work on the subject. Though he regards Two Years Before the Mast as a "boy's book" and "a parenthesis in my life," it is a best-seller that is widely known on the North-American continent.

If I were a historical archaeologist doing research along the Californian coast, Dana would be one of my prime sources. On any number of levels, his "boy's book" is an invaluable historical document. I wish I could have known him, and that together we could have shipped out under better circumstances, because truly, he would have been my kind of shipmate.

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