Having replenished our diminished sea-stock, we sailed from Porto Praya on the thirteenth of April. After clearing the roadstead, we had a clear view, to the west, of Fogo; its towering altitude rising thousands of feet above the bosom of the ocean in which its base was laid. This ocean-mountain bears evident marks of its volcanic origin. Volumes of smoke were seen issuing from its numerous craters, so long as its bold outline was distinctly defined. Ere sunset, the Cape de Verds were completely hid from the view, and we stood south, inclining to the eastward, until the eighteenth, when we reached the latitude of 3° 31′ north, and 21° 41′ west longitude. We now shaped our course more to the westward, and on the nineteenth, being in latitude 2° 22′ north and 22° 8′ west longitude, we took in a light breeze from the south and east, and crossed the equator on the twenty-second, in longitude 23° 30′. The usual ceremonies of a visit from Neptune, which not unfrequently terminate in quarrels and fights, were judiciously dispensed with. An attempt was, however, made to play a trick on the uninitiated, which for a short time afforded much mirth and amusement. A hair was placed across the centre of a telescope-glass, and handed round, for the purpose of _seeing_ the equatorial _line_; but a young midshipman having obtained another glass, _in which he could not see the line_, the trick became at once discovered. To make some amends to the crew for the loss of their usual frolic on crossing the line, a modicum of good punch was served out in the evening, when it was found that out of the whole number there was one-eighth (or twenty-one men) belonging to the “total abstinence” society; a proportion which I suppose to be as large as could be found among the same number of landsmen.