MY FIRST WHALE. 11 



for their own personal safety, as well as from the non- 

 expectation of gain, I believe arose the immaculate state 

 in which it returned to England. 



Having put my things in order in my berth, and 

 forced my eyes from their internal retrospection, I knew 

 that we had left Liverpool at 1.45 p.m., and had dis 

 charged the pilot at about 3 p.m. off the Bell Buoy. 

 Steaming by the North Channel, we passed between the 

 Calf of Man and the Chickens, South Rock abreast of 

 us on the Irish coast. At 4.10 a.m. on Sunday we were 

 abreast of the Maiden's Lights ; at 6.5 a.m. entered 

 the Sound of Mahu; at 10 a.m., in the Sound of Innis- 

 trahull, the extreme north point of Ireland; the Tory 

 lighthouse was then the last land we saw. We then 

 sped on our way with fine weather, but with a head 

 wind and swell which sent innumerable passengers to 

 the privacy of their berths. Having been some days at 

 sea, the first living thing that interested me on the 

 broad bosom of the Atlantic was a whale on our star 

 board quarter ; by the thermometer the temperature of 

 the air 66, water 60. The next, an ornithological ob 

 servation, was the fact of a flock of gulls, not as birds 

 of passage, but occupied in fishing, and at the time I 

 saw them we were from six to seven hundred miles off 

 the coast of Greenland, the nearest sea-shore to where 

 we were. I make this remark because I have heard it 

 stated that the common gull is seldom seen so very far 

 out at sea. 



On the 27th we had thick weather, a false horizon at 

 noon, to be guarded against in taking observations, and 

 plenty of Mother Carey's chickens playing around us, 

 their flight along the crest of the waves resembling that 

 of the swallow. Fog cleared away in the afternoon, 



