The humorous account of the chief mate which occurs in the section “In the Mediterranean,” in “Leaves from my Journal,” is taken from a full and lively letter written by Lowell a few days later on shipboard to his brother-in-law, Dr. Estes Howe. By that time they were off Tunis. “Perhaps the finest thing we have seen,” he writes to Dr. Howe, “was the first view of the African coast, which was Cape Espartel in Morocco. There were five mountains in the background, the highest being as tall as the Catskills, but the outlines much sharper and grander. They were heaped together as we saw the Adirondacks from Burlington. We were a whole day and half the night in beating through the Straits of Gibraltar, and had very fine views of the shores on both sides. The little Spanish town of Tarifa had a great charm for me, lying under a mountain opposite the Moorish coast, with its now useless walls all around it. The fires of the charcoal burners on the mountains were exceedingly picturesque, especially at night, when they gave to some dozen peaks on both sides the aspect of volcanoes. Apes Hill, opposite the rock of Gibraltar, is higher and more peculiar in its forms than the rock itself. In some views it is almost a perfect cone, and again, some of the lower peaks, when you can catch their individual outlines, are pyramidal. After getting through the Straits, we kept along the Spanish coast, with very light winds and a new moon, as far as Cape de Gat. We were four days in making these 150 miles (we ran 280 miles in one day on the Atlantic). All along there were noble mountains, with here and there a little white town sprinkled along their bases on the edge of the water like the grains of rice which the girl dropped in the fairy tale. Sometimes you see larger buildings on the slope of the mountain, which seem to be convents. All are white except the watch-towers, which you see now and then on points, and these are commonly of a soft brown, the color of the stone. The hues of the mountains at sunset and just after were exquisite. The nearer ones were of a deep purple, and I now understand what was meant by the Mediterranean atmosphere....”