He who had seen the dolphins pass, and who had recorded the fugitive cloud forms had doubtless been dead for many years. I knew that the book was what is called a ship's log-book, one in which seafaring people write every day. Its appearance did not strike me as strange, although I had never before had one in my hand. But for me it was a wonderful and unexpected experience to thus suddenly come into a knowledge of the aspect of the sea and sky in the midst of the South Pacific Ocean, at a given time in a year long past. . . . Oh! for a glimpse of that beautiful and tranquil sea, of those “cat-tails” that dotted the deep blue arch of the sky, and of those dolphins that swiftly traversed the lonely southern waters! In this sailor's life, in this profession so terrifying (a career forbidden to me), how many delightful things happened! I had never until this evening realized it with such intensity. The memory of that hasty little reading is the reason why, during my watches at sea, whenever a helmsman signals a passage of dolphins, I have always turned my eyes in their direction to watch them; and it has always given me a peculiar pleasure to note the incident in the log-book, differing so little from the one in which the sailors of June, 1813, had written before me. CHAPTER LXVII. During the vacation that followed, our departure for the south and the mountains enchanted me more than did my first trip there. As in the preceding summer we started, my sister and I, at the beginning of August. While it was no longer a journey of adventure, the pleasure of returning and again finding there all the things that had formerly so delighted me surpassed the charm of going forth to meet the unknown. Between the point where the railroad ended and the village in which our cousins lived, in the course of the long carriage ride, our little coachman, in venturing to take what he supposed a short cut, lost his way, and he carried us into the most exquisite forest nooks. The weather was beautiful and radiant. With what joy I saluted the first peasant women whom I saw walking along with great copper water-jars upon their heads, and the first swarthy peasants conversing in the well remembered dialect, how I rejoiced when we rolled along over the blood-colored roads, and when the mountains junipers came into view.