GALES OFF THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE.
It may have been fancy, but the gales at the Cape of Good Hope impressed me differently from those at Cape Horn. The latter place, and the associations with it, make one feel that there is more of a sub base in its winds and waters. There, two oceans form and go apart to either side of a continent; you are near the polar regions, the realms of snow and ice. You expect every manifestation of sublimity, but not of caprice; the awful forms of nature, grandeur with stillness; or, when storms are summoned, there is a heavy tread in their battalions. Off the Cape of Good Hope we had the impression that the wind was as fierce, its rate of motion perhaps greater, but we could not tremble before it as we did at Cape Horn. Two gales off the Cape of Good Hope gave us good specimens of the violent weather in that region. The sun was nearly out on each of the two days, but the wind, though not as fitful as in a typhoon, was as violent as in a typhoon gale in the China Seas. A British ship as large as ours was near us the whole of one day, so that we saw by the way in which the gale was serving her, how we probably appeared to our neighbor. At one time she seemed to be moored on a mountain top; in a few moments she was lost to sight, but this of course was owing as much to our depression and elevation as to hers. There was so much regularity in our motion that it awakened no fear. My daughters were captivated by the wildness of the scenery, but the roll of the ship was so great that it was not easy to keep upright; so the captain had pillows brought on deck, and by passing ropes around the passengers, and making them fast, the pillows and they were secure against the lee and the weather roll, and for a short time they kept their lookout. That the scene was less terrific than corresponding tempests at Cape Horn was owing in part to our having more experience on reaching the eastern continent, but mostly, as it seemed to me, to the more awful grandeur of the Cape Horn region.