attacks of angina, but I have lost track of him for several years. Latitude, 3° 50′ south; longitude, 31° 35′ west. +June 9+ Late yesterday afternoon Captain Scruggs came up and said that Fernando de Noronha was visible to leeward from aloft, and that if we looked hard enough we might be able to see it from the deck. So we gazed long and earnestly over to the westward, and there, sure enough, arose a soft, rose-colored cloud through the mist; and in another half-hour we could perceive the various islands which constitute this group, together with the lofty pyramidal rock one thousand feet above the sea, which crowns the loftiest of the islands, giving it a peculiar individuality, so that it is not possible to mistake this cluster for any other known group. We were near enough to count four distinct islands, the largest of them being twenty miles in circumference, and we could just make out the tremendous walls of sheer, unbroken rock falling into the sea; but beyond this it was not given us to penetrate even with the strongest glasses on board. Would that we had been fifteen miles nearer, that we might have compared this group with Trinidad, which rears its desolate summit two thousand and twenty feet above the sea, fifteen degrees farther south. The spectacle of the surf breaking on Fernando de Noronha must be even grander than on St. Paul’s Rocks; for, lying in the very heart of the strong southeast trade-wind, the full force of the mighty South Atlantic surge dashes ceaselessly against its basaltic walls. Last evening was very fine indeed, the wind having let go sufficiently to make the deck agreeable; and as the moon shone with great power, it was a night of remarkable beauty even for the Tropics, although some ragged scud which blew swiftly across the moon presaged plenty of wind for to-day. The indications were fulfilled, for it has been very squally since early this morning; all the royals came in at eleven o’clock, and we have been plunging along in a broken sea, through savage blasts which roar in the rigging with an angry voice. The most unfortunate thing is that the wind is heading us by hauling to the southward, and for the greater part of the past twenty-four hours we have been steering well to the westward of southwest; so that, in spite of our weatherly position on the line, we are going to have trouble in getting past that portion of Brazil lying to the southward of San Roque. Indeed, at noon we were only seventy-five miles from the land, a little south of the Great Bugbear, as Maury pertinently styled the famous cape.