May 20 Sunday – Sam’s notebook entry: “6 AM Making land.” From “Idle Excursion”:

Away across the sunny waves one saw a faint dark stripe stretched along under the horizon,—or pretended to see it, for the credit of his eyesight. Even the Reverend [Twichell] said he saw it, a thing which was manifestly not so. But I never have seen anyone who was morally strong enough to confess that he could not see land when others claimed that they could.

The steamer Bermuda did not anchor up north at St. George’s where the Quaker City had a decade before. It went down the North Shore to Grassy Bay and entered the Great Sound, approaching Hamilton Harbor by way of the Timlins’ Narrows [D. Hoffman 30]. From Sam’s notebook:

So the Reverend and I had at last arrived at Hamilton, the principal town in the Bermuda Islands. A wonderfully white town; white as snow itself. White as marble; white as flour. Yet looking like none of these, exactly. Never mind, we said; we shall hit upon a figure by and by that will describe this peculiar white [“Idle Excursion”].

Hotel Closed [The season was over]. No vehicle to take us or baggage to Mrs. Kirkham’s [boarding house]. Hired little darkey boy to show us. He had seat of pants like a township map chromolithographed. He wound us in & out & here & there—once through very narrow lane. Charged double.

Houses painfully white—town & houses & verandahs all Spanish style.

Got two large cool, well lighted rooms, & now the calm Sabbath is being profaned by the crowing & clucking of chickens, the wauling of cats & the clanging of a metallic neighboring piano & people singing “Only an Armor Bearer” &c with power.

Couldn’t sleep—got to feeling low & far from home—went into next room to find a cheerful book—got on in the dark—“Meditations on Death & Eternity.” Looked again & found books better suited to my mood [MTNJ 2: 19-20].

At the boarding house Sam read “The Broken Vow,” a poem in the Feb. 1834 issue of Godey’s Lady’s Book. He noted: “They were a sad & sentimental lot in those days” [Gribben 510].