blow should come every two or three weeks. Our joy, therefore, is very great, now that we are going so finely and heading our true course, with the wind on the quarter, and all possible sail set and drawing. Another unusual, and to our eyes an extremely beautiful, spectacle was the bright, clear sky of last night, with the shining path of the Milky Way encircling the heavens with its girdle of gold-dust; the stately form of the Crux Australis, now at the zenith; and in the south, forty-five degrees above the horizon, those two weird nebulæ, the Magellan Clouds, gazing down at us with wan, dim eyes. Still another source of delight is the fact that for the first time in three weeks I have been able to wear foot-gear other than rubber boots. My leather ones cracked from being hung too near the stove, so that ever since we passed Cape Virgins it has either been raining so hard or the sea has been so heavy, even on the poop, that nothing but rubber would keep the feet dry; and three steady weeks of rubber boots is somewhat monotonous. And sleep! Heavens! what a grand one last night was for peaceful, deep rest, the first that we have had since we showed our nose outside of Cape St. John. Instead of the customary rolling through an arc of about forty degrees, there was nothing in the ship’s motion to indicate that we were afloat except an occasional deep breath, rather pleasant than otherwise. But I am writing as though we were in the Tropics and in fine weather for good and all; instead of which, there are hundreds, almost thousands of miles to cover before the fine, warm days begin. At this season fine weather cannot be looked for till we cross 30° south in about 100° west, a difference of latitude alone of eighteen hundred miles, not to mention longitude at all. Would that some stranger could have heard the mate’s conversation at dinner to-day and witnessed his gesticulations. The old man commenced on the subject of the men who manned sailing ships in these days, a topic that invariably has him in a helpless rage in a few minutes. “Why,” said he, after a long speech, “I had a crew once in the ‘Priscilly Waters’ that was sailors, not farmers; one watch of those fellows would do more work in four hours than the whole of the eighteen men here in a day, and there was only ten of ’em before the mast. Why, all hands on the ‘Waters’ used to nearly yank the masts out of her.”