ut 9,165 miles. We had frightful weather till the 24th,
when we found ourselves in 58 deg. 16' of south latitude. Although it was
the height of summer in that hemisphere, and the days as long as they
are at Quebec on the 21st of June (we could read on deck at midnight
without artificial light), the cold was nevertheless very great and the
air very humid: the mercury for several days was but fourteen degrees
above freezing point, by Fahrenheit's thermometer. If such is the
temperature in these latitudes at the end of December, corresponding to
our June, what must it be in the shortest days of the year, and where
can the Patagonians then take refuge, and the inhabitants of the islands
so improperly named the Land of Fire!

The wind, which till the 24th had been contrary, hauled round to the
south, and we ran westward. The next day being Christmas, we had the
satisfaction to learn by our noon-day observation that we had weathered
the cape, and were, consequently, now in the Pacific ocean. Up to that
date we had but one man attacked with scurvy, a malady to which those
who make long voyages are subject, and which is occasioned by the
constant use of salt provisions, by the humidity of the vessel, and the
inaction.

From the 25th of December till the 1st of January, we were favored with
a fair wind and ran eighteen degrees to the north in that short space of
time. Though cold yet, the weather was nevertheless very agreeable. On
the 17th, in latitude 10 deg. S., and longitude 110 deg. 50' W., we took
several _bonitas_, an excellent fish. We passed the equator on the 23d,
in 128 deg. 14' of west longitude. A great many porpoises came round the
vessel. On the 25th arose a tempest which lasted till the 28th. The wind
then shifted to the E.S.E. and carried us two hundred and twenty-four
miles on our course in twenty-four hours. Then we had several days of
contrary winds; on the 8th of February it hauled to the S.E., and on the
11th we saw the peak of a mountain covered with snow, which the first
mate, who was familiar with these seas, told me was the summit of
_Mona-Roah_, a high mountain on the island of _Ohehy_, one of those
which the circumnavigator Cook named the Sandwich Isles, and where he
met his death in 1779. We headed to the land all day, and although we
made eight or nine knots an hour, it was not till evening that we were
near enough to distinguish the huts of the islanders: which is
sufficient to prove the prodigiou