PORTER’S JOURNAL. 
SI 
feent, and stowed away below; as also to get, from aloft all the 
booms and rigging. Indeed our top-sails, courses, and storm-stay¬ 
sails were the only sails that we were, at any time, enabled to use • 
and it was rarely that they could be set, without being reefed. 
After this reduction of weight from aloft, we found the ship to 
strain less ; for, although in her form was combined all the quali¬ 
ties necessary to constitute, what seamen call, a good sea-boat; 
yet, we found she was not proof against the effect of the violent 
and dangerous seas, for which this sea is so justly noted. Her wa,- 
ter-ways began to grow more open, and her upper works to work 
considerably; and had she not those qualities above mentioned, in 
a remarkable degree, it is likely we should not have escaped some 
serious disaster, or at least without the loss of some of our masts 
or bowsprit, which, from violent rolling and pitching, were fre¬ 
quently endangered. 
However, with great industry, much care, and extraordinary 
good fortune, we had succeeded in getting, as I before observed, 
(by our reckoning,) as far to the westward as 77° west longitude ; 
and this, too, we had effected by constant struggles against strong 
westerly gales, in a shorter time, perhaps, than it ever before was 
accomplished in ; and we now saw a speedy end to all our suffer¬ 
ings and anxieties, and tasted, in pleasing anticipation, our de¬ 
lightful cruize in the Pacific. It is true, we had had no opportu¬ 
nity of verifying our dead reckoning by lunar observations; nor 
could we place any reliance on the chronometer, as the cold had 
greatly changed her rate of going, which was first made evident 
to us on making Staten Land ; yet we felt great confidence, not¬ 
withstanding, that our dead reckoning was not so far wrong, as to 
make it at all probable, that we were not sufficiently to the west 
of Terra del Fuego, for a north course to take us clear of it. On 
the 21st, the wind shifted to the north-west, with which we stood 
to the southward and westward, and made, during the twenty-four 
hours, upwards of tw o degrees of longitude ; and, on the meridian 
©f the 22d, we were in latitude 57° 54' south, and longitude, by 
account, 79° 28' w r est; which is upwards of four degrees to the 
west of the westernmost part of Terra del Fuego. Now, no 
aloubt remained of our having made sufficient westing; and as the 
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