Friday, Feb. 27. It is now forty-four days since we left Rio. We had a splendid run to the Cape, but since that we have wrenched every league from the elements by the hardest. We sailed two thousand miles off the Cape to make four hundred on our course. We literally beat round it. A feat that has been deemed almost impracticable. We have hardly been for an hour without a head wind and a head-sea. We have the latter to-day, but a wind from the west that is driving us on in spite of it nine knots the hour.
We are rapidly reaching more genial latitudes. The transition is like that from Lapland to the Line. The severity of the cold off the cape is inexplicable. The thermometer never fell below the freezing point, and yet no amount of clothing we could put on, would keep us warm. We shivered in double flannels and over-coats; our feet, had they been chiselled from ice, could scarcely have been colder; and all this in a temperature that would not crisp a pool of sleeping water. Hail fell, it is true, with great force and frequency, but it was from upper strata of air. The currents nearer the sea would not have congealed vapor.
It will be said we felt the cold more, coming, as we did, from a torrid clime. But the system does not cool down so rapidly. The rigors of the first northern winter are felt least by those born nearest the sun. The Italian division in the Russian campaign suffered less than any other. The Poles fell like icicles from a tree shaken by a winter storm, while the Neapolitans seemed to melt the very snows in which they bivouacked. The cold we experienced is to be ascribed to the absorption of electricity from the system by the condition of the atmosphere.
Saturday, Feb. 28. Lat. 45° 10′ S., long. 80° 24′ W. We are now making a good run towards our port. If our west wind holds we shall in a few days let go our anchors in the harbor of Valparaiso. Fresh meat, vegetables, and milk will be a luxury. Our last pig and fowl went some days since to the cook. Our potatoes still hold out, but they are not larger than bullets, and are as full of water as a tick of blood. Our hommony is in the kernel, and will not soften sufficiently for use short of a week’s boiling, which is hardly practicable in a ship’s economy of water.
The only fresh article of the flesh kind that comes upon our table, is salmon, which has been preserved in air-tight jars. Our bread is baked on board; by what process it is attempted to be raised I know not; but well would it be for human nature were its vanity as little puffed up. We attempted a plum-pudding to-day, but every plum was as soundly imbedded as marine fossils in primitive rocks. We have some tripe left, but I understand the leader of our band wants it for a drum-head, and our blacksmith is anxious to get it for an apron. If its aptitudes determine the disposition to be made of it, no connoisseur in gastrotomy can save it from the anvil or the drum. Well dried it would ring a good tattoo,
Or shield a Vulcan, while he shapes
The form his bolted thunder takes.
Sunday, March 1. Divine service on the spar-deck; officers and crew present; the air balmy; the broad Pacific heaving in silent majesty around, and a soft cloud, loaded with the incense of nature, soaring into the great dome of heaven. Lead me for worship—
Not to the dome, where crumbling arch and column
Attest the feebleness of mortal hand,