128 
PORTER’S JOURNAL. 
While we lay to here, I observed the sea filled with small red 
specks, and supposed at first that some hog had been killed on 
board, and that part of the blood was floating along side y but on 
a close examination I perceived them to have at times a very 
quick motion, and on directing some of them to be caught in a 
bucket, discovered them to be young craw-fish, of different sizes, 
but generally from one inch in length to one tenth that size. The 
©cean appeared filled with them ; and from the immense num¬ 
ber of birds that kept about this spot, I am induced to believe-, 
that no small numbers of them were daily devoured by them. 
They did not appear to be governed by any general laws, each 
one pursuing his own course, and shifting for himself; no two 
appearing in the same direction ; and it is probable that, as soon 
as they left the egg, each one began to seek his own subsistence. 
Two of them were put into a bottle of sea-water, and on some 
crumbs of bread being thrown in, they seized and devoured them 
very ravenously. 
About this time I concluded to change the water in which the 
lish had been put, that was pumped out of the cask off Cape Horn. 
To this period it had been very lively ; but perceiving the water 
to have a yellow tinge, and feeling apprehensive that it might un¬ 
dergo fermentation, from the food which had at different times 
been thrown in, I supposed that pure water would be better than 
that in which he had been so long confined, but supposed it best 
to produce a gradual change ; with this view I put into the bot¬ 
tle about one gill of the water we had taken on board at Valpa¬ 
raiso. The water in the bottle gradually assumed a milky appear¬ 
ance, and next morning I found the fish dead and floating on the 
surface. This confirmed suspicions we had before entertained, of 
the bad qualities of this water. Doctor Miller, who was in a very- 
low state of health, and had been since he joined the Essex, com¬ 
plained of its producing costiveness. I also, and many others, ex¬ 
perienced the same effect; it has a disagreeable brackish taste, 
and with great difficulty it can be made to mix with soap. 
On the evening of the 4th, James Spafford, the gunner’s mate 
who had been so unfortunately wounded by accident at Mocha, 
departed this life, regretted by every officer and man in the ship* 
