MALADY AFFLICTING A CREW. 357 



vice that looked in the least chafed, or white, must be 

 removed; the yards stripped and rigging-fitted ; the 

 ratlines taken off the mizzen topmast and foretopgal- 

 lant rigging ; the rigging fore and aft, alow and aloft, 

 must be rattled down, and a coat of tar then applied 

 to all the hemp material ; the paint-work, inside and 

 out, from the copper to the trucks must be renewed, 

 and the spars scraped: then we will be ready for 

 home. All this must be done before the 27th of 

 Januaiy, at which time we are to leave the whaling- 

 ground ; so that we will have nothing to occupy us 

 after that date, except to make as speedy a passage 

 as possible to Kew Bedford. 



On the Carroll ground we entered upon the !N"ew 

 Year. On the 4th of January we gammoned the 

 ship Messenger, of l^ew Bedford. She left the Ma- 

 dagascar ground four days after us, and had been 

 boxing off the Cape for twenty-one days; so that 

 we esteemed ourselves fortunate in having escaped 

 such miserable weather with no further detention 

 than we experienced. Her crew were affected by a 

 peculiar malady, which somewhat resembled moon- 

 blindness : more or less of them had been affected 

 with it during the whole voyage ; and at the present 

 time there were eight men in her forecastle who could 

 not see each other after dark, but whose vision durino- 

 the day was perfectly good and clear. One of them 

 whilst aboard of our vessel complained of pain across 

 the temples in the daytime. He was the only one 

 of those afiiicted who expressed a sense of pain or 

 inconvenience, apart from loss of sight. I have seen 

 individual cases before, but never in such numbers 

 aboard a single ship. Their captain attributed it to 



