South latitude! Our expectations were fulfilled, for we entered the Southern Hemisphere in the morning watch, crossing the great circle which circumscribes the earth at fifteen minutes past four. Thus we have entered upon the second stage of our voyage; and while the first quarter was certainly not everything which could be desired, we reached the line in very good time, twenty-seven days from New York. If we had had even a little better luck in the Doldrums, four days could have been stricken from the twenty-seven; this is a far better passage, though, than we made in the “Mandalore,” when we had been forty-nine days at sea before we finally cut the equator. Perhaps the most comforting part is the fact that the skipper seems to have exhausted his supply of _aguardiente_, for he has been very solemn and strictly sober for three or four days. Heaven grant that he has no more grog! This weather is so magnificent now that the memory of our late smothering calms, during which we were eight days in making four degrees of southing, has entirely passed away, for we are humming through the water at eight knots, close-hauled, with streaming scuppers, while the superb southeast trade-wind sings a blithesome tune in the rigging. It is the grandest wind that blows; so cool and steady, and the ocean so sparkles under its influence, with a snow-white crest topping each sea, reflecting the splendid blue of the heavens in its azure depths, that existence becomes an unbounded delight. I think, too, that the finest cloud effects which we saw on our first voyage were in the southeast Trades. True to precedence, yesterday afternoon at four o’clock the northeastern sky was obscured by a huge dark cloud of the color of indigo, and rendered doubly so by the sun shining upon it; this cloud extended almost to the sea-rim, black and frowning, while immediately beneath it, on the horizon, appeared some faraway masses of cumulus cloud of a most beautiful cream color, enchanting the mind with their loveliness and resembling great yellow icebergs.