After entering the Atlantic Ocean we steered to the northward and westward, until we arrived in latitude 32° south, longitude 7° east. This locality is known as the Carroll ground, and is a favorite resort of the South Atlantic whalemen. Here, as we had good weather, but saw no whales, all hands were occupied in repairing and renewing the rigging, to get the ship in order for a return home. It is a great point of honor among seamen to return their rigging in as good, if not better order than when they received it, with a view to commendation from their owners; consequently the lower rigging was turned in anew, particular care being taken to have everything as nice as possible: blocks must be new-strapped, and neatly covered with canvas; all service that looked in the least chafed, or white, must be removed; the yards stripped and rigging-fitted; the ratlines taken off the mizzen topmast and foretopgallant rigging; the rigging fore and aft, alow and aloft, must be rattled down, and a coat of tar then applied to all the hemp material; the paint-work, inside and out, from the copper to the trucks must be renewed, and the spars scraped: then we will be ready for home. All this must be done before the 27th of January, at which time we are to leave the whaling-ground; so that we will have nothing to occupy us after that date, except to make as speedy a passage as possible to New Bedford. On the Carroll ground we entered upon the New Year. On the 4th of January we gammoned the ship Messenger, of New Bedford. She left the Madagascar ground four days after us, and had been boxing off the Cape for twenty-one days; so that we esteemed ourselves fortunate in having escaped such miserable weather with no further detention than we experienced. Her crew were affected by a peculiar malady, which somewhat resembled moon-blindness: more or less of them had been affected with it during the whole voyage; and at the present time there were eight men in her forecastle who could not see each other after dark, but whose vision during the day was perfectly good and clear. One of them whilst aboard of our vessel complained of pain across the temples in the daytime. He was the only one of those afflicted who expressed a sense of pain or inconvenience, apart from loss of sight. I have seen individual cases before, but never in such numbers aboard a single ship. Their captain attributed it to moon-blindness; but these men positively assured me that they had not slept with their faces exposed to the moon’s rays. Again, it disappeared on their near approach to land; and at one time they were completely relieved of it by the use of Irish potatoes. The men themselves attributed the malady either to the tarræ root, of which they had consumed a large quantity on the voyage, or else to their water, which, as they stated, had been for a long time brackish and unwholesome. I am inclined to think that it originated from the bilge-water; for a similar case from this cause