Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 June 1890 — DANA'S OLD SHIPMATE. [ARTICLE]

DANA'S OLD SHIPMATE.

A Survivor of “Two Tears Before the Mast” Still Alive in California. At Santa Barbara, San Pedro, San Jnan, Capistrano and San Diego one is rare to have*Tw« Yeirs Before the Mast* and its author brought to one’s attention, not only from the pleasure derived in noting bow the remarkably accurate and comprehensive de-criptions of the features of those places, though written in 1835, are just as correct in 1890, but this American classic is constantly brought to tne front by residents of the places named, who take a local pride in the renown achieved by the book, and 60 indirectly by the place of their habitat.on. This local self-sufficiency and jealousy of other points has become a characteristic feature of Southern California. Possibly prompted by this desire for a little bit-of local notoriety, writes a corjesposrdent of the New York Tribune from Los Angeles, a friend who resides at San Diego writes me that he has discovered a human relic m the grizzled, gnarled, salted person of one “Jack” Stewart, who claims to have been a shipmate of Dana’s on the voyage of the Alert from the coast to Boston, and wtios? story is fully substantiated. When Jack sprang ashore with Dana at Boston he *was a lithe, active, able seaman; to-;lay he is, my correspondent writes, “a decrepit, palsied old man of eighty odd years. He sailed out -of Boston harbor on the Alert on her next trip to the West Coast, and he sailed'out of his Saxon energy into the Latinized languor of Span-•ish-American existence at old San Diego, haw Jack recently. He lives in an old adobe in the shadow of the ruins of the old Mission Church; the house has no 'windows, no conveniences; the floor wore ■out possibly half a century ago, but no one has had any time in which to repair • it. It was probably dilapidated years ago when Jack, just in the first stages of being Mexicanized. took to his casa his dark-skinned half In lian and half Spaa>ish bride, perhaps pretty then, but now * wrinkled black old woman. Jack has a daughter, a good-looking young woman, who had enough ambition to get a public -school education, but to her, no more 'than to her father, are repaired floo ®, windows, or anything else that requires much time to secure, necessities. “Jack, after a brief stay in Boston, had -sailed cack to California on the Alert as her second mate. She came into San Diego Bay to load with hides again, and here Jack had some hot words with his captain, and by some means getting his liberty came ashore and stayed. I asked him if he bad ever read Mr. Dana’s book. Yes, he had heard Dana had written u book about his seafaring life, and he had bought a copy of it and he had read it came to a part which told fao<w in a nasty blow there was reefing which Dana did because the rest hung back and soldiered, and he did not care to read any more. In fact, the old sea-dog broadly intimated that Dana had paintpd himself in very glowing co’ors. He did not seem to think much of Dana as a sailor nor as a chronicler. I asked the brown-eyed, black-haired daughter if she had re A the book. No, she had not read it. She ‘had net much time in which to read. “Jack, I found, cared little or nothing for anything in the outside world. He had rarely been away from Old Blown since the day he went ashore from the Alert. All through the wonders worked since 1849 he has siestaed away life in his adobe casa with his semi-raced, semitropic helpmate. He cared nothing lor the reflected greatness I tried to throw upon him, so I came awav leavingthe two relics of the past of California, Jack Stewart and Old Town, both of which Mr. Dana would recognize at a glanoe today, though both have bevin rudely handled by time.” I hope my friend is not deceived. There is a poetic Alness in the idea of old San Diego and this shipmate of Dana’s going through all these years of deeay together.