At eleven o’clock last night we heard the rasping voice of old Goggins sing out, “Land ahead!” The captain turned out at once (he goes to bed now at seven, and sleeps till midnight if the weather isn’t too outrageous), and immediately ordered the ship on the other tack; and, after we had come around, three pinnacles of rock were seen standing sharply up out of the sea, for the night wasn’t a very dark one. They were the Diego Ramirez Rocks, which, lying eighteen marine leagues southwest of Cape Horn, form unquestionably the most dangerous obstruction in the entire Southern Ocean, rearing their jagged peaks vertically out of a depth of two hundred fathoms, right in the track of westward-bound ships. If the weather is thick and dark, there is nothing to apprise the mariner of their proximity, even if he keeps the lead going, until the thunder of what is perhaps the most tremendous surf in the world warns him, too late, that he is within hailing distance of the dreaded Diego Ramirez. A crash, a great shout, and lo! a stately ship and her company are effaced in a moment of time, a few bits of timber cast upon the shore by those vast surges of the South Pacific being all that remains of what was one of man’s most beautiful works, a full-rigged ship. The last vessel to go ashore on these rocks was the American ship “Arabia”; and, although she went to pieces immediately, all of her crew miraculously escaped and were taken off by another vessel and landed at Montevideo. Ship-masters call the rocks ‘Dyeego Rammerreez’, though they inconsistently pronounce San Diego as it ought to be,--Deeaigo. Why is it, I wonder, that this land is always spoken of as being eighteen marine leagues from Cape Horn? Why not say fifty-four miles. Yet all ocean directories say that they are eighteen marine leagues from the Horn, though all other distances are given in miles. We would really have passed several miles to leeward of the rocks if we had kept on, but no ship-master will ever take any chances with them; however, we are much elated at finding ourselves an appreciable distance to the westward of the Cape. Throughout the day we have been fanning along under a main-royal! But that’s the way of this region. Yesterday morning under reefed topsails; this morning courtesying quietly along over an almost smooth sea, bar the southwesterly swell.