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 su‘face 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 rongh 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 
