On their return from the excursion to the sheep farm, our friends learned that a steamer of the Orient line had just arrived, and would leave at noon the next day for Australia. Dr. Whitney decided to take passage on this steamer, and the matter was very quickly arranged.
When the great ship left the harbor of Cape Town, our friends stood on her deck and were deeply interested in the scene about them. As they steamed out around the breakwater, they had a fine view of Table Bay and the mountains that surround it. Then they passed a series of cliff-like mountains, known as the Twelve Apostles, and after them some brightly colored mountains that had a dazzling appearance in the bright sunlight. Thirty miles from Cape Town they passed the famous Cape of Good Hope, which is popularly but erroneously supposed to be the southern end of the continent; the fact is that the point of Africa nearest to the South Pole is Cape Agulhas, sixty or seventy miles away from the Cape of Good Hope.
Down to Cape Agulhas the steamer had followed the coast line. Now it steered away from the coast, and gradually the mountains of the southern end of Africa faded and became dim in the distance, and gradually disappeared altogether from sight. Our friends were now upon the great Southern Ocean, which sweeps entirely around this part of the globe.
“We have a long voyage before us now,” said Harry to Ned; “we have sixteen days of steaming, so one of the officers tells me, before we reach the coast of Australia.”
“Well, if that is the case,” Ned answered, “we have plenty of time to become acquainted with the Southern Ocean. I wonder if it will be very different from the Atlantic.”
“As to that,” replied Harry, “I don’t know, but I have no doubt it has peculiarities of its own. We will see about that later.”
Flocks of birds accompanied the ship as it steamed away from the coast. Some were familiar sights to our young friends, and some were new to them, or comparatively so. The next day and the few succeeding days made them acquainted with several birds that they had never seen, and the boys were so interested in them that Harry wrote a description, which we will presently consider. But before doing so, however, we will look at a note which Ned made concerning the waves of the Southern Ocean.
“The waves of this part of the boundless waste of waters that covers three fourths of the globe,” said Ned, in his journal, “are the largest we have ever seen. The prevailing winds are westerly, and the captain tells us that they drive a continuous series of waves right around the globe. You have heard of the long swell of the Pacific, but it is not, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, anywhere equal to the immense swells of the Southern Ocean. I have never seen waves that began to be as large. The captain says that the crests are often thirty feet high, and three hundred and ninety feet apart. Sir James Ross, in his Antartic expedition, measured waves thirty-six feet high, and said that when two ships were in the hollows of two adjoining waves, their hulls were completely concealed from each other by the crest of water between them. This great steamer, measuring nearly five thousand tons, is rolled and tossed as if it were nothing more than an egg-shell, and such of the passengers as are liable to seasickness are staying below out of sight. Fancy what it must be to sail on this ocean in a small craft of one hundred or two hundred tons! I think I would prefer to be on shore.”
And now we come to Harry’s account of the birds. He wrote as follows:—
“Dr. Whitney says that I must make a distinction between land birds, coast birds, and ocean birds. Land birds are only at sea by accident; coast birds are seen only in the neighborhood of the land, but ocean birds go far out at sea, and rarely visit the land except during their breeding season. When you see a land bird out of sight of the shore, you can know that he has been driven there by the wind; perhaps in a squall or rain storm. The doctor tells me that we can make a general distinction between the three kinds of birds, by remembering that the more the bird lives on the land, the more he flaps his wings, and most land birds flap their wings constantly. A few, like the eagle, condor, and other birds of prey, sail about and flap their wings occasionally, but the true ocean birds, as a rule, flap their wings very little.