Patagonia Bookshelf

As we quitted the Island the next day, the previous calm gave way to a very favourable wind which, as Captain Boyse said, was ready for us as soon as we got on board and drove us into the Trades which carried us, sometimes at the rate of 8 to 10½ miles per hour, into the neighbourhood of the Equator. There we experienced short calms and very heavy rains.

We crossed the line into the Southern Hemisphere on Friday morning, 17th inst. about 3 o'clock a.m. All of Home seemed then to have disappeared and now (January 31) we have lost Ursa Minor and the Pole Star, the last land in our native hemisphere and that has been followed by Ursa Major etc. I seem in a different world with a new Heaven overhead but instead of the old familiar constellations we admire the elevated Crux et Corona Australis and others little less brilliant and eloquent in declaring the glory of Him Who is with His people always, even to the end of the world. On several evenings past two remarkable nebulae have been visible called the Magellan clouds, aptly named.

The sun has been darting his hot rays vertically upon us for some days: my straw hat has covered the whole of my shadow which has grown somewhat less from another cause, viz. my having lost flesh since losing my home, but this I attribute chiefly to my having suffered sea nausea so long and partly, perhaps, to my feeling sometimes as Noah's dove did when sent out alone. Though when I am in an unselfish mood I am glad for somebody else's sake that I am alone at present, till at least experience has satisfied me that safety is to be enjoyed among the Patagonians. This I cannot know till after the time that the next party are expected to leave England; after that time, if anyone would come out, she would have to come alone which I can hardly expect, so my single state seems unalterable unless I am called to England to be ordained or to superintend the printing of the Scriptures in the Patagonian tongue. I know not what I should choose. "Be careful for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God".

We have occasionally had plenty of company: whales, grampuses [either a type of dolphin or an orca whale, Ed.], dolphins, porpoises, bonitos [a type of tuna, Ed.], flying fish, sharks, Portuguese men of war [a type of jellyfish, Ed.], whalebirds [?], etc. I was most pleased with some pilot fishes and their motions over the back of their "friend" a shark. They swim between his fins immediately behind his head, and their motions were so regulated that they seemed to be a part of himself; he took our hook and when we hauled him on deck they necessarily stayed behind, but they appeared to be sorry for it as they stayed some time about the ship. They are beautifully marked - something like a mackerel but not quite so large. I think they communicated in some way or other with some other sharks in the neighbourhood, for they would not approach the vessel next day although they were not in sight when the other was caught. I noticed that no pilot fish accompanied them when they attempted to approach us; perhaps that was how they warned them of the danger to be apprehended from us.