292 PRAIRIE AND FOREST. 



gained the deck, so bright and joyous appeared the weath- 

 er, that you could imagine that nature was laughing and 

 enjoying our previous discomfort. Sambo, the cook, soon 

 supplied me with a cup of coffee, which, with my morning 

 pipe, I thoroughly enjoyed, while I watched the detached 

 banks of fog roll lazily over the water, occasionally shutting 

 out or opening vistas of the distance. The whole water 

 was alive with fish, the surface in many places being 

 broken, and resembling the rapids of a river, with their 

 gambols; but soon a giant porpoise would roll in among 

 them, when all the terrified fry would disappear for a few 

 minutes, to re-present themselves when the intruder had 

 departed. Gulls, in immense numbers, floated upon the 

 water, as if resting from the fatigue caused by the war of 

 the elements, and adding beauty to the picture by their 

 pure white, spotless plumage. I remember hearing an old 

 salt, in answer to the question of why sea -fowl, in bad 

 weather, so much more fearlessly approach vessels than 

 when it is calm, give the following solution : " Well, you 

 see, those good folks who die don't go to Davy Jones, but 

 turn into Cape pigeons, and kittiwakes, and them kind of 

 birds, and when they think it's rough and kind of dan- 

 gerous, they naturally like to hover about their friends to 

 protect them." If angels visit earth in these modern and 

 wicked times, there are many garbs they could assume less 

 beautiful and less suitable than that of the snowy - white 

 sea-gull. 



At breakfast our captain expressed much satisfaction at 

 the bad weather having passed, and particularly at its be- 

 ing so unusually calm ; for he much feared, what with the 

 usual incorrectness of dead reckoning and strong tides 

 which exist to a greater extent here than probably in any 

 other portion of the globe that he was some way off his 

 course. On taking soundings, the depth indicated by the 



