456 
ON TROPICAL SEAS. 
Archipelagos of the Chonos and Guayatecas, which, on reaching the ocean, meet 
with others that periodically proceed from the N.W. Although the existence of 
the latter has been indisputably demonstrated in the latitude of Middle Chili, yet 
we experienced in them no obstacle to our course, for it was not till we were in 
the latitude of Valdavia, and had reached 77° W. Greenwich, that we took a 
N.-E. direction towards the port. Sailing again became very pleasant, for our 
rapidity was seldom less than eight miles an hour, and a bright sky—the pure 
blue of which was only interrupted, during the morning and evening hours of 
the day, by flying clouds—informed us that we were approaching the celebrated 
climate of the American Italy. Our indefatigable companions, the Albatrosses, 
which had accompanied us in all weathers, from the Patagonian coast, gradually 
diminished in numbers, and entirely disappeared when we had reached the 36° 
latitude. Though the sky, here, does not possess the brilliant splendor of Equa¬ 
torial regions, it has an extraordinary and peculiar transparency, and the sea is 
not without its wonders of the animal world. We met a broad shoal of beautiful 
Dolphins,* which were striped black and white : their numbers were so great as 
to appear almost incredible, and their extent could not be discovered from the 
mast-head. We had them around us for several days, and their playful leaps 
into the air, and rapid dartings along the water, amused us in our idle moments. 
They are far more wary than other species of the same genus, so that only one 
could be harpooned, the flesh of which became the property of the sailors. The 
shoal extending in a S.-W. direction renders it very difficult to assign the true 
reason of their migration, as the seas in that part must in a few weeks have been 
overtaken by the Antarctic Winter. 
Another phenomenon attracted still more attention. On the 12th of March, 
about mid-day, we were not a little alarmed at a considerable noise on deck, and 
a command for the vessel to lay-by immediately. The dirty red colour of the 
sea had led to the well-founded suspicion that we were in shallow water. How¬ 
ever, the sounding-line discovered no ground at a depth of 130 fathoms. The sea, 
as far as the horizon even from the topmast, appeared of a dark red colour, and 
in a stream whose breadth was estimated at about six miles which occasionally 
divided itself into short lateral branches. Whilst sailing slowly on, we found 
that the colour changed into a brilliant purple, so that the foam which constantly 
collects at the stern of a sailing vessel was of a rosy-red colour. The appearance 
was now very striking, as the purple stream was sharply divided from the blue 
sea, a circumstance we could the more easily observe as our course lay directly 
through the extended stripe between the N.-W. and S.-E. The water, when 
drawn up in a bucket, appeared quite clear, but a faint purple colour was 
Dclphinns leucoramphus , Illicj, 
