10th.—We sailed at daylight from Rio, in full hope that the cool weather we shall find on going round Cape Horn, and the fine climate of Chile, will do us all good. I have not been in bed for three nights; my invalids are in that state, that night watching is necessary for them.
13th.—In addition to our other troubles, the first lieutenant is taken dangerously ill: but Captain Graham appears better, though not yet able to go on deck.
16th.—Yesterday afternoon the mercury in the barometer sunk in a very short space of time a whole inch, and we had a gale of wind. The cold is sensibly increased. Fahrenheit’s thermometer often stood at 92° in Rio harbour; it is now 68°, and we have many sick. B. is getting better.
17th.—Wind and sea abated, and the barometer rising once more; the mercury stands at 30 inches and two-tenths. I have lain down at four o'clock these two mornings, Glennie having kindly relieved my watching at that hour. We have removed the dead-lights from the cabin windows.
18th.—Every thing better. The young people again at school. Some lunars taken. We are in 36° 55´ S. latitude, and the thermometer is at 68°.; barometer 30–2.
On the 19th and 20th the mercury in the barometer sunk gradually from 30 to 29–02, and rose again as before on the 21st. It blew hard; the thermometer fell to 58°, in latitude 42° S. There are many albatrosses and stormy petrels about the ship.
22d.—Latitude 46° 25' S., longitude 52° 40' W. The weather very cold, though the thermometer is at 56°, barometer 29–08; a very heavy swell. Great numbers of the Cape pigeon about the ship.
24th.—Latitude 50° 30'; thermometer 44° morning and evening, 47° at noon. Seeing two penguins to-day, we supposed some land must be near, but found no bottom with 100 fathoms line. The cold weather seems to have a good effect on our invalids. The barometer fell suddenly, and a strong S.W. wind succeeded, and we were glad to light a fire in the cabin.
I am sorry we have passed so far out of sight of the Falkland Islands, Sir John Hawkins’s maiden land. The idea of seeing a town left standing as it was, by all its inhabitants at once, and of the tame animals becoming wild, had something romantic. It seemed like a realisation of the Arabian tale of the half-marble prince, and in real interest comes near the discovery of the lost Greenland settlements. I do not know any thing that gratifies the imagination, more than the situations and incidents that by bringing distant periods of time together, places them, as it were, at once within our own reach. I remember some years ago spending a whole day with no companion but my guide at Pompeii, and becoming so intimate with the ancients, their ways, and manners, that I felt, when I went home to Naples, and its lazaroni, and its English travellers, as I suppose, that one of the seven sleepers to have done, who went to purchase bread with money five centuries old. As to the marble cities of Moorish Africa, when we consider their exposure to the sirocco, and read Dolomieu's Experiments on the Atmosphere, during the prevalence of that wind at Malta, we shall find but too probable a reason for their existence as reported.
25th.—Latitude 51° 58' S., longitude 51° W., thermometer 41°. Strong south-westerly gales and heavy sea. Just as our friends in England are looking forward to spring, its gay light days and early flowers, we are sailing towards frozen regions, where avarice’ self has been forced to give up half-formed settlements by the severity of the climate. We are in the midst of a dark boisterous sea; over us, a dense, grey, cold sky. The albatross, stormy petrel, and pintado are our companions; yet there is a pleasure in stemming the apparently irresistible waves, and in wrestling thus with the elements. I forget what writer it is who observes, that the sublime and the ridiculous border on each other; I am sure they approach very nearly at sea. If I look abroad, I see the grandest and most sublime object in nature,—the ocean raging in its might, and man, in all his honour, and dignity, and powers of mind and body, wrestling with and commanding it: then I look within, round my little home in the cabin, and every roll of the ship causes accidents irresistibly ludicrous; and in spite of the inconveniences they bring with them, one cannot choose but laugh. Sometimes, in spite of all usual precautions, of cushions and clothes, the breakfast-table is suddenly stripped of half its load, which is lodged in the lee scuppers, whither the coal-scuttle and its contents had adjourned the instant before: then succeed the school-room distresses of capsized ink-stands, broken slates, torn books, and lost places; not to mention the loss of many a painful calculation, and other evils exquisite in their kind, but abundantly laughable, especially, as it happened just now, if the school-master is induced to measure his length on the deck, when in the act of reprimanding the carelessness which subjects the slates and books to these untoward chances.