& 
PORTER’S JOURNAL. 77 
aea ; felicitating ourselves on our fortunate and pleasant passage 
through the streights, and our prospects of a safe and speedy one 
around the cape. It was in my power to have steered a direct, 
course for Cape Horn ; but the weather continuing remarkably 
hazy, I thought it most prudent to keep aloof from the land, and 
steered more to the southward, until the morning; when there ap¬ 
pearing a prospect of a change of weather, I changed my course 
for the island of Diego Ramiries, which is to the southward and 
westward of the Cape. 
On the meridian of the 14th, the horizon was somewhat 
clear; the wind moderate, from the westward; the sun shining 
out bright; and, with the exception of some dark and lowering 
clouds to the northward, we had every prospect of pleasant wea¬ 
ther. The cape was now in sight, bearing north ; and Diego 
Ramiries bearing north-west; and the black clouds before men¬ 
tioned, served well to give additional horror to their dreary and 
inhospitable aspect. But so different was the temperature of the 
air, the appearance of the heavens, and the smoothness of the 
sea, to every thing we had expected, and pictured to ourselves, 
that we could not but smile at our own credulity and folly, in giv¬ 
ing credit to (what we supposed) the exaggerated and miraculous 
accounts of former voyages; and even when we admitted, for a 
moment, the correctness of their statements, we could not help at¬ 
tributing their disasters and misfortunes chiefly to their own im- 
prudencies and mismanagements ; and as we had endeavoured 
to guard against every accident that we had to apprehend, we 
flattered ourselves with the belief, that fortune would be more 
favourable to our enterprize, than she had been to theirs. But, 
while we were indulging ourselves in these pleasing speculations., 
the black clouds, hanging over Cape Horn, burst upon us with a. 
fury we little expected, and reduced us in a few minutes to a 
reefed fore-sail, and close-reefed;:main top-sail, and in a few hours 
afterwards to our storm stay-sails. Nor was the violence of the 
winds the only danger we had to encounter; for it produced an 
irregular and dangerous sea, that threatened to jerk away our 
masts, at every roll of the ship. With this wind we steered to 
the southward, with a view of getting an offing from the land, in 
