June 8. Latitude 47° 6', longitude 59° 8'. We have cold weather, strong winds, squalls, snow, hail and rain. Great numbers of sea birds, chiefly Cape Pigeons, follow the ship. They bite very readily at a hook baited with pork, and are easily caught. They are pretty birds, and fly with great ease and gracefulness, and their wings seem never to tire. They alight on the water, on which they swim with great agility, and I have seen them dive several feet into the water in pursuit of food that had been thrown to them from the ship. There is considerable difference both in the size and color of these birds, and perhaps a skillful ornithologist might determine them to consist of several species, though I am inclined to consider them as varieties of the same species. One of the passengers caught two of them for me, but owing to cold weather and a slight seasickness at this time, I lost them.
June 10. Caught two more Cape Pigeons, and it being cold on deck, I was glad to accept the invitation from some of the passengers in the main cabin to skin the birds there. Their beaks were of a delicate light ash or lead color, and their breasts white. There were some dark spots on the wings. They were seventeen inches long, and forty-two and a half inches in the stretch of their wings. Two spotted ones, whose skins I have preserved, are smaller, being only thirty-four inches in alar extent.
Our oranges have nearly disappeared. Having been kept in close boxes and chests, they have decayed very rapidly. I have found them very beneficial to my health, and should be glad to keep them till we arrive at the next port, but they will be used up before we reach Cape Horn.
[CHAPTER VI.]
A Disagreeable Scene—Scarcity of Oil—Lamps and Slush—An Albatross—Ill Manners of the Mate—Cold Weather—The Whiffletree Watch—Disagreeable Scene—Magellan Clouds and Southern Cross—An Act of Kindness—Turnovers and Sport—Tierra del Fuego and Staten Land—A Perilous Passage—Ducks and Cape Pigeons—A Squall—A Black Albatross—Cape Horn—Stormy Weather—A Gale—Accident at the Breakfast Table.
One of those disagreeable scenes, which are of too frequent occurrence among us, came off this morning. Captain J. without any ceremony or consultation with the passengers, ordered the cooks to supply us with but two meals a day. This would not have been very seriously objected to, had we been furnished with any decent food in place of the vile trash, upon which we have been forced to subsist. But after waiting till half past eight, the time appointed for breakfast under this new regulation, behold! a pan of scouse is placed before us! And this was to suffice until two or three in the afternoon. Some of us could not, and others would not, eat it, and after much "growling," as the captain terms our remonstrances, we succeeded in getting a dish of cold hasty pudding—the cooks refusing to warm it for us—and on this, with a dipper full of muddy coffee for those who could drink it, and of water for those who could not, we made our breakfast. We were in an excellent frame of mind to quarrel with the captain, and after a warm dispute we succeeded in having the former order of things restored. And bad enough it was at that.