So time sped, Midshipman Perkins performing his multifarious duties with alacrity and approval, and having some perilous adventures by flood and field in pursuit of wild game, until July, 1857, when the monotony of the cruise was broken by a trip to the banks of Newfoundland for the protection of our fishing interests, and including visits at Boston, St. John’s, and Halifax.

The people of the Provinces were very hospitable, and the contrast between the dusky damsels of the isthmus and the ruddy-cheeked belles of St. John’s and Halifax was brightening in the extreme; and young Perkins, ever gallant in his intercourse with the sex, and a good dancer, found much favor with the Provincial beauties, and doubtless made up for past deprivations, in the alluring contact with their charms.

Returning southward in the fall, the ship cruised among the West Indies, visiting, among other ports, Cape Haytien, the old capital of the island of Hayti, to inquire into the imprisonment of an American merchant captain.  This place, before the French Revolution, had been a city of great magnificence and beauty—­the Paris of the Isles; and the old French nobility, possessing enormous landed estates and large numbers of slaves, lived in a state of almost fabled grandeur and luxury; but negro rule, the removal of the seat of government to Port-au-Prince, and the great earthquake of 1842, have destroyed all but a semblance of its former glory and importance.

Among other sights visited by the officers was the old home of Count Cristoff, a castle of great size and strength, built on one of the highest hills, some twelve miles back of the town.  It was told of the old Count that he used every year to bury large sums of money from his revenues, and then shoot the slave who did the work, that the secret of the spot might be known only to himself.

In January, 1858, Midshipman Perkins was detached from the Cyane, and he bade adieu forever to her dark, cramped-up, tallow-candle lighted steerage, baggy hammock, and hard fare, where the occasional dessert to a salt dinner had been dried apples, mixed with bread and flavored with whiskey!  There were no eleven-o’clock breakfasts for midshipmen in those days, and canned meats, condensed milk, preserved fruits, and other luxuries now common on shipboard, were almost unknown.

A few brief days at home and orders came to join the storeship Release, which vessel after a three months’ cruise in the Mediterranean returned to New York to fill up with stores and provisions for the Paraguay expedition.  That expedition had for its object the chastisement of the Dictator Lopez for certain dastardly acts committed against our flag on the River Parana.