She Had
Studding-Sails Out Alow And Aloft, With A Light But Steady Breeze,
And Her Captain Said He Could Not Get More Than Four Knots Out Of
Her And Thought He Should Have A Long Passage.
We were going six
on an easy bowline.
The next day, about three P. M., passed a large corvette-built
ship, close upon the wind, with royals and skysails set fore
and aft, under English colors. She was standing south-by-east,
probably bound round Cape Horn. She had men in her tops, and black
mast-heads; heavily sparred, with sails cut to a t, and other marks
of a man-of-war. She sailed well, and presented a fine appearance;
the proud, aristocratic-looking banner of St. George, the cross in
a blood-red field, waving from the mizen. We probably were as fine
a sight, with our studding-sails spread far out beyond the ship
on either side, and rising in a pyramid to royal studding-sails
and sky-sails, burying the hull in canvas, and looking like what
the whale-men on the Banks, under their stump top-gallant masts,
call "a Cape Horn-er under a cloud of sail."
Friday, August 12th. At daylight made the island of Trinidad,
situated in lat. 20° 28' S., long. 29° 08' W. At twelve M.,
it bore N. W. 1/2 N., distant twenty-seven miles. It was a
beautiful day, the sea hardly ruffled by the light trades,
and the island looking like a small blue mound rising from
a field of glass.
Such a fair and peaceful-looking spot is said to have been, for a
long time, the resort of a band of pirates, who ravaged the tropical
seas.
Thursday, August 18th. At three P. M., made the island of Fernando
Naronha, lying in lat. 3° 55' S., long. 32° 35' W.; and between
twelve o'clock Friday night and one o'clock Saturday morning,
crossed the equator, for the fourth time since leaving Boston,
in long. 35° W.; having been twenty-seven days from Staten
Land - a distance, by the courses we had made, of more than
four thousand miles.
We were now to the northward of the line, and every day added to
our latitude. The Magellan Clouds, the last sign of South latitude,
were sunk in the horizon, and the north star, the Great Bear,
and the familiar signs of northern latitudes, were rising in
the heavens.
Next to seeing land, there is no sight which makes one realize
more that he is drawing near home, than to see the same heavens,
under which he was born, shining at night over his head. The
weather was extremely hot, with the usual tropical alternations
of a scorching sun and squalls of rain; yet not a word was said
in complaint of the heat, for we all remembered that only three or
four weeks before we would have given nearly our all to have been
where we now were. We had plenty of water, too, which we caught by
spreading an awning, with shot thrown in to make hollows.
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