1894
Feb. 20

At sea on Str. "Madiana"

Noon observation Lat. 28"50; long. 66"53; [?] 293 miles.

10A.M. A summer sky and a summer sea yet both
different from anything ever seen at the North. The sky
very pale, tender blue with cumulous clouds many of which
are delicate rose or salmon as if it were near sunset instead
of mid-forenoon. The sea is much sheer than it was yesterday
- a deep yet perfectly pure indigo.  It is just supplied by a
gentle breeze.  Near at hand the surface is undulating with
short irregular swells which run in every direction meeting
and heaping up sharp ridges and peaks but in the distance
it looks as level as the surface of a pond and the
horizon line is clear and firm. There is more Gulf weed
than yesterday but it seems to be more broken up; few
of the fragments are larger than a dinner plate and none
more than two or three yards across but they dot the 
water so thickly that scarce a square rod is free from them.
The color is the same as that of those seen yesterday.
But it is said to become finer yellow further to the
southward. No Portugese man o'war this morning.

A Dusky Shearwater (Puffinus anduboni) has just
passed, half-a-mile or more away.  Save for its smaller
size and perhaps quicker motions it resembled very
closely the Greater Shearwater (P. major). It is the first
that I have ever seen.

  Mr. & Mrs. Hubbard from Washington are among our
passengers. Hubbard is accompanying Riley, as assistant,
to attack the scale bugs which are laying waste the
lime and lemon groves of Montserrat. He used to
know Maynard  and he has taken a course of study
at the Museum Comparative Zoology.