I forgot to say that I gave David, the Scot, a drink on July Fourth. He had been throwing out clumsy hints for one on that day, so I filled a four-ounce bottle with Glenlivet and took it to him while he was eating his dinner in his tiny, water-logged cavern forward of the galley. The radiance reflected from his countenance upon the walls as he sighted the grog fairly lit up the gloomy den, and when he had downed the fiery liquid perfectly raw, he put down the bottle and delivered the following oration, his superb figure raised to its supreme height: “Wherever ye may go in this world, sir, may good luck go with ye, hand in hand; may it not be many years till ye get command of a ship and the finest one under the flag; I thank ye for the best drink that ever passed me lips.” I was quite taken aback by his earnestness and the depth of feeling with which he uttered these words in the broadest of brogue so pleasant to the ear; and when he hoped that I would soon command a ship, he was wishing me to hold the most exalted position which the mind of a seaman can conceive. By the look of the aneroid we are close to some dirt, as sailors say, for now at 3 +P. M.+ the glass stands at 29.08, a fall of an inch in twenty hours; the sky, too, has a hard look, the sun at noon being unable to pierce the gloom, but shining hazy and dim, like a gas-jet behind frosted glass. The altitude at noon now is only 20°, and the sun’s rays are devoid of heat and almost of cheer. Last evening, though, we witnessed another one of those rare and radiant Patagonian sunsets. Every one who has looked at the illustrations in Nansen’s “Farthest North” will call to mind some strange, impossible-looking purple and crimson stratus clouds of the most violent hues. Well, we have actually seen one of these singular and extremely gorgeous skies, unnatural almost in its transcendent beauty. Nansen has caught perfectly the more delicate tints as well as the most flaming colors. We did fine work to-day, and in the twenty-four hours logged two hundred and forty miles. Latitude, 48° 45′ south; longitude, 65° 5′ west. +July 8+ At some time during the morning watch we crossed the fiftieth parallel of south latitude, and have, therefore, now commenced the passage of Cape Horn, the stormiest headland in the world, at the worst possible season,--in the heart of the Antarctic winter. When a vessel is between 50° south in the Atlantic and 50° south in the Pacific she is said to be making the passage of the Horn, and is off the Cape when she is anywhere between those parallels; it matters not how far south she may be blown, she is “off” Cape Horn from 50° to 50°. I think that I have somewhere before said that an average passage would be about twenty days, though the bad luck of some men is astonishing. On her last westward voyage, for instance, the American ship “M. P. Grace” was more than six weeks off the Cape,--forty-five days, to be precise.