AT SEA AGAIX. 6S 



The wind fell gradually tlie farther they receded from 

 the African coast : it was sometimes smooth water for 

 several hours, and these short calms were regularly inter- 

 * rupted by electrical phenomena. Black thick clouds, 

 marked by strong outlines, rose on the east, and it seem- 

 ed as if a squall would have forced the Pizarro to hand 

 her topsails ; but the breeze freshened anew, there fell 

 a few large drops of rain, and the storm dispersed with- 

 . out their hearing any thunder. 



To the north of the Cape Yerd Islands they met with 

 great masses of floating seaweeds. They were the tropic 

 grape, which grows on submarine rocks, only from the 

 equator to the fortieth degree of north and south lati- 

 tude. From the twenty-second degree of latitude, they 

 found the surface of the sea covered with flying-fish, 

 which threw themselves up into the air, twelve, fifteen, 

 or eighteen feet, and fell down on the deck. 



From the time they entered the torrid zone, they were 

 never weary of admiring, at night, the beauty of the 

 southern sky, which, as they advanced to the south, 

 opened new constellations to their view. " We feel," 

 says Humboldt, writing of himself at this time, " we 

 feel an indescribable sensation when, on approaching the 

 equator, and particularly on passing from one hemi- 

 sphere to the other, we see those stars, which we have 

 contemplated from our infancy, progressively sink, and 

 finally disappear. Nothing awakens in the traveller a 

 livelier remembrance of the immense distance by which 

 he is separated from his country, than the aspect of au 

 unknown firmament. The grouping of the stars of the 

 first magnitude, some scattered nebulae, rivalling in splen- 

 dour the milky way, and tracts of space remarkable for 



