Concerning this place Lieut. Maury quotes from the journal of Commodore Sinclair: "This is certainly one of the most unpleasant regions in our globe. A dense, close atmosphere, except for a few hours after a thunder-storm, during which time torrents of rain fall, when the air becomes a little refreshed; but a hot, glowing sun heats it again, and but for your awning and the little air put in circulation by the continual flapping of the ship's sails it would be almost insufferable. No person who has not crossed this region can form an adequate idea of its unpleasant effects. You feel a degree of lassitude unconquerable, which not even the sea-bathing which everywhere else proved so salutary and renovating can dispel. Except when in actual danger of shipwreck I never spent twelve more disagreeable days. "I crossed the line and soon found I had surmounted all the difficulties consequent to that event; that the breeze continued to freshen and draw round to the south south-east, bringing with it a clear sky and most heavenly temperature, renovating and refreshing beyond description. Nothing was now to be seen but cheerful countenances, exchanged as by enchantment from that sleepy sluggishness which had borne us all down for the last two weeks." Maury himself says of it: "Besides being a region of calms and baffling winds it is a region noted for its rains and clouds which make it one of the most oppressive and disagreeable places at sea. The emigrant ships from Europe to Australia have to cross it. They are often baffled in it for two or three weeks; then the children and the passengers who are of delicate health suffer most. It is a frightful graveyard on the wayside to that golden land." The memory of days, nights and weeks repeated at intervals through many years, when disappointment, depression, vexation and sadness have been my companions, impel me to heap up testimony against this dreadful place, the dark valley of the waters. Far more cheerful to the sailor are the roaring gales of Cape Horn than the sluggish, damp, provoking airs of the Doldrums.