I don’t expect that we will weather the Abrolhoses after all; we might be able to scrape along, but that would be taking chances, which Captain Scruggs never does. The chief danger in holding on to this course would be that of drifting foul of the reefs which stud the ocean in the vicinity of these islands. Therefore at eight o’clock this evening we will go around on the other tack, and it is to be hoped that we’ll do better than we did yesterday, with only ninety miles of latitude to our credit. This day was even finer than its predecessor, and we had some very grand cloud scenery, the eastern horizon being covered at five in the afternoon with great cirro-cumulus clouds in which we could perceive a number of bright luminous spots on the sea-line, called by sailors “sun-dogs”; being the bases of brilliant rainbows whose arches were concealed by the heavy clouds, producing a strange appearance. The carpenter is now engaged in hewing out a new maintop-gallant-yard, a slow but interesting piece of work. The old one is weak and may not withstand the heavy weather of Cape Horn, and the maintop-gallant-sail is a very important one. It is as well to observe here, that whenever anything carries away aboard of this ship it is never spliced and forced to do further duty, as is the case on many vessels; the sheet, clew-line, or whatever has parted, is at once unrove, and a brand-new rope takes its place. The first illustration which we had of this was one morning in the Doldrums, when the maintop-gallant-stay-sail-halliards parted with a crack, and the half-dozen men on the end of it, among whom was myself, went down in a heap. Without a word a new piece of manila was rove in its place; and the same thing happened to the spanker-sheet a few nights ago. Indeed, this is one of the distinguishing marks of a Yankee ship. You will rarely find a piece of old running-gear aboard of a square-rigger flying the stars and stripes. Late yesterday afternoon we caught another dolphin, a small one, weighing about fifteen pounds. He showed none of the splendid blues of our first fish, though the yellows and greens were very fine. Indeed, this dolphin, as he was towed through the water under the counter, resembled nothing so much as a strip of gorgeous, glittering satin, particularly whenever, as the fish rose slightly above the surface, a glossy sheen irradiated his lithe, elegant body. And immediately afterward we captured a bonito, about as large as a bluefish.