THE GORDONS OF METHLIC AND HADDO.
page 358
In February, 1867, he resided for some time in Boston, assiduously
studying navigation at the Nautical College there, and obtained from the
college authorities a certificate of his possessing the requisite skill
and judgment for the first officer of any ship in the merchant service.
Early in that year he sailed from New York to Galveston, Texas, with 'a
good Boston captain,' named John Wilson, who
was a Baptist and a teetotaller. On the 12th of August he wrote from New
York to his mother, mentioning that he had just arrived from Mexico, and
giving a vivid description of the imminent danger to which his vessel
had been exposed, 'a whole night and part of a day bumping on a
sandbank, in a sea full of sharks, on an inhospitable and dangerous
coast. where sandflies, horseflies, and mosquitos abound, and where at
night can be heard the savage roar of the tigers and wild animals which
inhabit the impervious tropical jungle which lines the coast and comes
right down to the beach.' He made another narrow escape in the Gulf
Stream on New Year's Eve, described in a letter to his mother dated 10th
February, 1868. Another letter to Lady Aberdeen, dated 1st December,
1868, gives an account of his deliverance from a still more imminent
danger.
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