and enjoying it much, especially as it was daily getting warmer. I wished much I could have accompanied him, but by this time I was completely prostrated by sea-sickness. The weather, though blowy, continued very fine till Tuesday at four o'clock, when Papa came down and told me to prepare for a gale; an ominous black cloud had shown itself in the north-west horizon; this would not of itself have created much sensation, had it not been accompanied by an extraordinary fall in the barometer; it had, in fact, been falling for twenty-four hours, for at noon on Monday it stood rather above 30, and at midnight was as low as 29.55, which, in these latitudes, is a great fall. But on Tuesday, at nine A.M., it had fallen to 28.80, when it began rapidly to sink, till at half-past three it stood at 28.40, showing a fall of more than an inch and a half since the preceding day at noon. It seems that this is almost unprecedented, so that when the little black cloud appeared, every sail was taken in, and the main topmast and fore top-gallantmast lowered down on deck, and this was not done a bit too soon, for by half-past four, it blew a hurricane. The captain told a naval officer on board, that he had thought of putting the ship's head towards the gale, to let it blow past, but on further consideration, he put her right before it, though at the expense of losing a good deal of ground, as it made us go four points out of our course. Papa, who was on deck, said it was most magnificent to hear the fierce wind tearing past the vessel, and to see the ship not swaying in the least one way or another, but driving forwards with the masts perpendicular, as if irresistibly impelled through the water, without appearing to feel the waves. But alas, alas, this absence of motion, which was a paradise to me, lasted but some twenty minutes, while the fury of the blast continued. We ran before the gale for the next four hours, when it sufficiently moderated to enable us to resume our proper course.