afterward was placed at the Episcopal Academy of Cheshire, then in charge of an able and noted instructor, Dr. Tillotson Bronson. It is not probable that young Foote distinguished himself as a scholar, for that was not his bent; but in these schools in Cheshire he became fitted to pass the examination then required to become a member of West Point Military Academy, the entering of which institution was a kind of compromise with his parents, since he had already declared his intention of going into the Navy, to which his mother was particularly opposed. We may, however, suppose that his school-years were not wholly lost time, as his literary attainments and productions in after-years gave good proof. He mastered the common English branches, and always wrote in a clear and flowing style. He said to a friend in the latter part of his life that he had never read a book through consecutively, but was accustomed to glean its contents by a rapid glancing over it, and that he had found this to be the method of some distinguished men. One of his schoolmates at the Episcopal Academy in Cheshire was Gideon Welles, recently Secretary of the Navy, who proved to be one of his warmest friends, and who, in the trying scenes of the war, gave the Admiral his generous and unfailing support. From the testimony of another schoolmate,* young Foote was noted while at the academy for his amiability and tact in getting out of the dif ficulties which his frolicsome disposition plunged him into; and even the stern old doctor, a stickler for discipline, was not able to resist his winningly frank, gentle, and affectionate manners. This healthy, bold, adventurous boy, we may imagine, was learning a great deal of human nature and of the world that God made in those school-days in the picturesque country vil * George A. Jarvis, Esq., of Brooklyn, N. Y. lage among the green Connecticut hills. He knew where the tallest hickory-trees grew, and the biggest chestnuts ripened: "Knowledge never learned of schools, Of the wild bee's morning chase, Of the tenants of the wood; How the tortoise bears his shell, And the ground-mole sinks his well; How the oriole's nest is hung." He fished in the trout-brooks, swam in every stream, and explored every cave; and, more than all, he explored his own heart, and found out what he was made for; for early in his Cheshire boyhood-life he stoutly declared his intention of going to sea, and said that if prevented, he should do so the moment he was twenty-one years old. West Point proved a stepping-stone to his darling plan. He remained at the Military Academy of West Point but a few months-say from June to December-and in the latter part of the year 1822, at the age of sixteen, he was transferred to the Navy. CHAPTER II. FIRST CRUISES AND SEA-LIFE. THE active temperament of young Foote, ready for any thing but still life on shore, had found its right direction. On the 4th of December, 1822, he was appointed acting midshipman, and was stationed on board the schooner Grampus, under Commander Gregory, in whose fleet, upon the coast of Africa, he afterward held his first separate command. The Grampus belonged to the elder Commodore David Porter's squadron, which was sent out in 1823 to break up the piratical nests among the West India Islands. He thus entered at once upon the arduous duties of his profession. He was thrust into the "rough and ready" school of the older naval service; not passing through a preparatory academic training on shore, which is a comparatively modern invention. His habits of promptness and discipline were learned in the schoolroom of old ocean, among hard-handed tars and the stern realities of sea-life. From the testimony of his commander, he was an eager learner in the duties belonging to his profession; and at whatever hour of the day or night Lieutenant Gregory was called on deck, there would be found Midshipman Footein Gregory's own words-" dogging his heels:" ready to aid in taking an observation, active in running aloft, and with his eye and hand always on the right rope. He was equally devoted to the study of books then used in the science of navigation; in fact, as he often said, his life's ambition was to make himself a perfect naval officer-it ran in the line of his profession. The following is an extract from a boyish letter, dated on board the United States schooner Grampus, March 6, 1823, and addressed to an early friend and schoolmate:* "I hope you will excuse my negligence in not writing before this time, for I assure you that it did not proceed from want of affection, but on account of the inconvenience in writing while at sea on board of a vessel of this tonnage. To my great astonishment and satisfaction I received a midshipman's appointment, which you probably recollect I applied for a short time before going to West Point. We left the port of New York on the 1st of January, 1823, and filled away for Tampico; and we have made the ports of Matanzas, Havana, Tampico, and New Orleans. When we left Havana for Tampico, and had made the land, the wind commenced blowing a heavy gale from the northeast, so that it carried away our topmast studding-sail boom, and sprung our mainmast. She took in hogsheads of water in the wardroom and steerage; liferopes were rove on the windward side of the vessel, and one of the officers observed that we were going to with studding-sails set.' This gale was much more severe than it was in September, about sixteen months since. I am very well pleased with the service. I had a desire to visit foreign nations. The duty of the officers is nearly as hard as that of the men, as we have to be on the watch one third of the time day and night, four hours on and eight off." He was, above all, in this first cruise, introduced to the most severe perils and hardships of the naval service in the pursuit of pirates among the reefs of the Gulf. These pirates were the lineal descendants of the freebooters who at the end of the seventeenth century established themselves in the West India seas to prey upon Spanish commerce. The unquiet spirits of all countries resorted to them. Issuing from their strongholds the island of Tortuga, on the west coast of St. Domingo, and Port Royal, in Jamaica-they committed such andacious and successful robberies on the Spanish-American cities as to win almost the honors of legitimate heroes. The original buccaneers, however, who had some show of legaliza * William A. Browne, of Cheshire, Connecticut. + Hildreth's History of the United States, vol. ii., p. 38. Among the Pirates of the Gulf. 27 tion, degenerated into regular pirates, who, later in the eighteenth century, in Captain Kidd's time, were the terror of the seas, and who with waning power continued their depredations until their final extinction by the American Navy. With picked crews in open boats the officers cruised among the innumerable islands of the Cuban archipelago, where many a bloody sea-fight had taken place: The murderer's curse, the dead man's fixed, still glare, Our poet Dana's sombre fancy did not overdraw those horrid scenes when the reign of these desperadoes was at its height. The phantom of the "long, low, black-hulled" craft lingers in these seas even to this day. The American Navy has prided itself on the thoroughness of the work it did in abolishing the whole thing. It swept this curse from the seas. Not unfrequently the wily foe, who eluded pursuit in a thousand ways, turned and challenged the avengers of blood to hand-to-hand conflict. For six months of the time officers were out boating on these stormy waters, and it is said that young Foote personally distinguished himself in this service. He certainly acquired those habits of discipline, skill, and daring which afterward were so useful to him, and which could not have been learned under the best masters on shore. On the 6th of December, 1823, he was transferred from the Grampus to the Peacock, commanded by William Carter, master commandant; and on the 11th of the same month he was warranted as midshipman. The Peacock belonged to the Pacific squadron, under Commodore Hull. Before sailing, in a letter, dated January 29, 1824, he gives vent to a thoughtless, ambitious wish for action: |