264 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF 
but I wish to show you an example, having the prospect 
before me of an opportunity (and it may be an early one, too) 
to transmit it to you. You may recollect, I joined my fel- 
low passengers aboard the Forth, on the 17th Feb. and 
although we dropped down to the Heads, it was not until 
Sunday, the 20th, that the wind allowed us to put to sea. 
By sunset we had made a considerable stretch out to the 
eastward, the wind having continued from the northward in 
moderate breezes; at night it became exceedingly light, and 
the lower stratum of clouds or scud, being observed to pass 
over us from the southward and westward a change of wind 
appeared indicated. On the morning of Monday, the 21st, 
we encountered a smart squall from the S.W. accompanied 
by hail and heavy rain, which obliged us to shorten sail. 
During the day, we made some progress to the eastward, 
under reefed topsails, the wind having veered more to the 
south against us. After encountering a variety of weather, 
occasionally fair, but more frequently squally with dense 
fogs, we passed the South Cape of New Zealand, on our 
eighteenth day at sea, in about mid-channel between the 
headland and the Auckland group, and therefore in sight of 
neither. 
On the 13th of March we passed the meridian, and I once 
more entered the western hemisphere; and in order to 
accommodate our reckoning (having gained a day), we put 
ourselves back one. The winds now hung much to the 
northward, and. our passage easterly, ids the Horn, was 
protracted to our fifty-third day at sea, April 14th, when we 
passed that celebrated and somewhat notorious Cape. The 
sea was calm; and the sky beautiful, with Staten Land in 
sight, twelve leagues to the north, looking even green. It 
was to all of us a long and tedious run, and, moreover, un- 
usually monotonous, for we saw but few birds, and the sea 
had a uniformly heavy swell. As we approached the Cape, 
we had frequent squalls of snow, hail, and sleet; and at these 
periods, and particularly when a southerly wind blew, which 
it did sometimes so hard as to amount to a violent gale, we 
