26 
JOURNAL OF A 
appetite also was thereby much improved, and I believe, that the 
loss of it, and consequent decrease of strength, would at length 
have proved hurtful to my general health, and perhaps lowered my 
spirits, which were never more lively and active, had not this change 
of food afforded a seasonable relief. On this and the following days, 
we had strong, favourable wind, and the ship went steadily through 
the water. We were now visited by various kinds of water-fowl. 
Cape pigeons, mother Carey's chickens, and several birds with 
long beaks, unknown to us. Porpoises also played about us; but, 
in genera], we have lately appeared as if we were quite alone swim- 
ing in this vast ocean, not a creature approaching us. Our ship 
being new-coppered, the captain supposed, that the brightness of 
its bottom might alarm the finny inhabitants of the deep. 
10th. The wind increased in strength, but remained in our fa- 
vour. For the first time we had long-continued rain, which kept us 
all shut up in the cabin. We spent the time in reading letters from 
Greenland, received shortly before my departure from England. 1 
sent my answers from Capetown, and they arrived safe, by way of 
Copenhagen, in Greenland, in the spring of 18l6. None, indeed, of 
the many letters I wrote on board, and sent by various ships, and 
from the Cape, Avere lost, but all arrived sooner or later at the places 
of their destination, in Greenland-, Labrador, North America, the 
West Indies, Surinam, Sarepta near Astrachan, German}'^, Denmark, 
and England ; which shows a facility of communication over all the 
world, unknown to former generations, as the fruit of a widely 
extended and avcII arranged commercial intercourse among civilized 
nations. 
12th. To-day I read the first book of Esdras in the Apocrypha. 
I was much struck with many passages in it, relating to the coming 
of the Messiah, and the New I'estament dispensation, and particu- 
larly with the 5th chapter, verse 40th. The weather was showery; 
some sea- weed floated by, and the people thought, that they had 
heard the report of a gun to the southward. But we remained 
alone, driven by a brisk southerly wind, rather too much to the 
