Incipits: Melville, Benito Cereno

In the year 1799, Captain Amasa Delano, of Duxbury, in Massachusets, commanding a large sealer and general trader, lay at anchor with valuable cargo, in the harbor of St Maria – a small, desert, un inhabited island toward the southern extremity of the long coast of Chili.


Herman MELVILLE, Benito Cereno, 1855.