she begs biscuit of the cook. I pay nothing for her fare. M—’s tortoises are in my cabin, and seem very happy. Poor Mr. Porter is very sick, and so are the two or three coloured passengers, who won’t ‘make an effort’ at all. Mrs. H— (the captain’s wife), a young Cape lady, and I are the only ‘female ladies’ of the party. The other day we saw a shoal of porpoises, amounting to many hundreds, if not some thousands, who came frisking round the ship. When we first saw them they looked like a line of breakers; they made such a splash, and they jumped right out of the water three feet in height, and ten or twelve in distance, glittering green and bronze in the sun. Such a pretty, merry set of fellows! We shall touch at St. Helena, where I shall leave this letter to go by the mail steamer, that you may know a few weeks before I arrive how comfortably my voyage has begun. We see no Cape pigeons; they only visit outward ships—is not that strange?—but, _en revanche_, many more albatrosses than in coming; and we also enjoy the advantage of seeing all the homeward-bound ships, as they all _pass_ us—a humiliating fact. The captain laughed heartily because I said, ‘Oh, all right; I shall have the more sea for my money’,—when the prospect of a slow voyage was discussed. It is very provoking to be so much longer separated from you all than I had hoped, but I really believe that the bad air and discomfort of the other ships would have done me serious injury; while here I have every chance of benefiting to the utmost, and having mild weather the whole way, besides the utmost amount of comfort possible on board ship. There are some cockroaches, indeed, but that is the only drawback. The _Camperdown_ is fourteen years old, and was the crack ship to India in her day. Now she takes cargo and poop-passengers only, and, of course, only gets invalids and people who care more for comfort than speed. _Monday Evening_, May 26_th_.—Here we are, working away still to reach St. Helena. We got the tail of a terrific gale and a tremendous sea all night in our teeth, which broke up the south-east trades for a week. Now it is all smooth and fair, with a light breeze again right aft; the old trade again. Yesterday a large shark paid us a visit, with his suite of three pretty little pilot-fish, striped like zebras, who swam just over his back. He tried on a sailor’s cap which fell overboard, tossed it away contemptuously, snuffed at the fat pork with which a hook was baited, and would none of it, and finally ate the fresh sheep-skin which the butcher had in tow to clean it, previous to putting it away as a perquisite. It is a beautiful fish in shape and very graceful in motion.