I was glad to-day, when the dead-lights were removed, to see the bright, blue, but still boisterous sea, spreading with ample waves curled with snowy tops, in the sunshine; it is many days since we have seen the sun, and the white birds flying and chattering, or wrestling on the water, while the ship, like them, sometimes bravely mounts the very top of the wave, and sometimes quietly subsides with it. These are the things we behold "who go down to the sea in ships, "and occupy our business in the great waters." No one can imagine, who has not felt, the exhilaration of spirits produced by a dry clear day of sunshine at sea, after a week of rain and snow. _April 2d_.--A few minutes after noon, an iceberg was reported on the lee-bow. As I had never seen one, I went on deck for the first time since we left Rio to see it.[94] It appeared like a moderately high conical hill, and looked very white upon the bleak grey sky; it might be about twelve miles from us. The temperature of the water was 36° of Fahrenheit's thermometer, that of the air 38°, when the ice was nearest. [Note 94: We passed another on the 8th, which Glennie calculated to be 410 feet high; it was near enough for us to see the waves break on it. In conversing on this subject with the officers since,--for at the time I was indeed unable to think of it,--I find there is reason to think that, instead of an iceberg, we saw land on the 8th. It was seen in the latitude and longitude of an island visited by Drake, marked in the old charts.] For some few days the violent motion of the ship, occasioned by the heavy sea, has rendered writing and drawing irksome; for, as Lord Dorset's song has it, "Our paper, pens, and ink, and we, Roll up and down our ships, at sea." Nevertheless we are not idle. As the cabin has always a good fire in it, it is the general rendezvous for invalids; and the midshipmen come in and out as they please, as it is the school-room. In one corner Glennie has his apparatus for skinning and dissecting the birds we take; and we have constantly occasion to admire the beautiful contrivances of nature in providing for her creatures. These huge sea-birds, that we find so far from any land, have on each side large air-vessels adapted for floating them in the air, or on the water; they are placed below the wings, and the liver, gizzard, and entrails rest on them. In each gizzard of those we have yet opened, there have been two small pebbles, of unequal size; and the gizzard is very rough within. We have found more vegetable than animal food in their stomachs.