4 ° 
FROM BERMUDAS TO CAPE OF GOOD HOPE. 
occasion, when at the Antipodes, specimens of the same were fished up two inches in diameter 
and nine and a-half inches long. Yet, large as they are, how many would be required to 
cover the square miles of sea which we have seen transformed into a mass of floating light? 
These weird but beautiful manifestations of the countless hosts which inhabit the ocean, 
literally as well as figuratively, help to brighten many a quiet evening hour during a long 
BAOBAB TREE NEAR PORTO PRAYA. 
cruise. They are certainly more common and more brilliant in the vicinity of land, and I 
have often seen the water falling from our oars like molten gold or silver. Many of the 
specimens brought up in the course of our dredgings were enveloped in light; and the idea 
has even been suggested that this faculty of phosphorescence, found in most of the inhabitants 
of the deep, may be intended to compensate for the absence of solar light in the abysses of 
the ocean. 
During the 16th, 17th, and 18th, when in the latitude of Sierra Leone, our progress 
southwards was delayed by bad weather. On the 21st, and in lat. 3° N., we fell in with 
the expected South-east Trades, and, favoured by this welcome breeze, were able to shape our 
course westwards and along the Equator for St. Paul Rocks. 
ST. PAUL ROCKS. 
These solitary rocks, placed at about one-third of the distance between Cape S. Roque 
in South America and Cape Palmas in Africa, were already known to us from the descriptions 
of former visitors—Captain Fitzroy and Dr. Darwin in 1832, and Sir James Ross in 1839; 
but when they first came in sight in the afternoon of August 17th, we were surprised to find 
them appear but a small speck upon the ocean, barely rising above the white crest of the 
waves which perpetually dash up against their sides. The highest rock, remarkable for its 
pure white colour, rises only sixty feet above the sea-level. Merchant-vessels usually give these 
rocks a wide berth ; but our men found a bottle with a paper stating that on July 19th, 1872, 
Captain Park had landed from the ship “ Ann Millicent ” of Liverpool, bound from London 
to Colombo. Birds and crabs divide the ownership of St. Paul Rocks. The former may be 
