e ours, we did not make a very rapid
passage across the south Atlantic to Monte Video. This place is
charmingly situated on the estuary of the Rio de la Plata, and very
appropriately named; for it can be seen far away off, for miles at sea,
and itself commands magnificent views of its own beautiful harbour and
the surrounding inland scenery.

Here despatches awaited us, as Tom Finch had previously been informed at
Cape Coast Castle would be the case, ordering the _Porpoise_ to proceed
immediately to the Pacific and join the admiral on that station at
Callao; and, accordingly, after one of the briefest of stays at a port
which I have always longed since to have a more extended
acquaintanceship with, we up anchor and paddled away to our assigned
rendezvous--not by way of the "Horn," which we did not go round, as I
had imagined we would, for it was far too stormy; but, through the
Straits of Magellan, which are easy enough of passage to a steamer,
independent almost of winds and currents, although somewhat perilous to
sailing vessels, especially during the winter months.

Jocko seemed to feel the cold as soon as we began to run down towards
Terra del Fuego, and had some additional garments placed round him; but
true to what he evidently thought was his new and proper position, he
would not take up his quarters with his "old friend and brother,"
Pompey, in the cook's caboose, preferring to shiver in Tom's cabin till
he almost turned blue.

"Bress dat Massa Jocko!" Pompey would say after a vain attempt to coax
him to share his hospitality. "I can't make he out nohow! Guess he
tinks himself buckra ossifer and bery fine genelman, now de captin take
um into cabin, sure; but, he no rale genelman to turn up nose at um ole
frens! No, sah, I no spik to him no more!" and the negro cook would
retire with ill-suppressed anger, which was all the more amusing to us
from its having been occasioned by a monkey!

On our getting round into the Pacific, and sighting the coast towards
Valparaiso, where we had to stop and coal once more, the _Porpoise_ not
having much storage room in her old bunkers, Jocko got more on friendly
terms with the thermometer, making faces and jabbering away in his
lingo, which unfortunately no one but himself could understand, just as
if he were still in his native clime on the African continent.

Occasionally, too, as if his spirits carried him away on his restoration
to warmer latitudes, he would indulg