We are now in the very heart of the violent river Plate region, being at noon to-day abreast of that vast estuary, whose mouth is three degrees in width. The Rio de la Plata, or River of Silver, is, like Cape Hatteras, the dividing line between two climates: that of the torrid Brazils and of the cold, bleak pampas of the Argentine and Patagonia, just as Hatteras is the turning-point, so to speak, in the climates of our Southern and Middle Atlantic States. They are, too, about equidistant from the equator. A rather noteworthy fact is that, bar Cape Horn, the three stormiest localities in the Southern Hemisphere are almost exactly in the same latitude, though thousands of miles apart: the river Plate, Cape Agulhas, and Cape Leewin, at the southwestern end of Australia. Latitude, 36° 55′ south; longitude, 47° 20′ west. +June 28+ By way of variety, light winds were vouchsafed to us for the twenty-four hours, varying from southwest to northeast, and we made not fifty miles of southing in that time. Very suddenly last night at nine o’clock the wind let go at southwest, and instantly came out of the southeast, backing gradually to northeast, where it is now; but though a fair wind we are not doing three knots an hour. However, the glass is falling and a change is no doubt at hand, and the sea has gone down till nothing remains but a sullen, greasy roll from south-southeast. We earnestly hope for a strong, fair wind which will give us at least eight knots, for the skipper’s temper is failing rapidly, and he is beginning to rage at the weather. Generally, by the fiftieth day from New York he has crossed the parallel of 50° south, so that in round numbers we are about seven hundred miles north of his average, this being our forty-eighth day at sea. It has been noted previously, I think, that he has never been more than one hundred and thirty days on a voyage, and has made eight voyages between New York and San Francisco in less than one hundred days; his longest passage of the Horn--that is, from 50° to 50°--was nineteen days; the shortest, eleven. Fine work, all this, which few ship-masters can equal.