The next day, about three P.M., passed a large corvette-built ship, close upon the wind, with royals and skysails set fore and aft, under English colors.  She was standing south-by-east, probably bound round Cape Horn.  She had men in her tops, and black mast-heads; heavily sparred, with sails cut to a t, and other marks of a man-of-war.  She sailed well, and presented a fine appearance; the proud, feudal-looking banner of St. George—­ the cross in a blood-red field—­ waving from the mizzen.  We probably were nearly as fine a sight, with our studding-sails spread far out beyond the ship on either side, and rising in a pyramid to royal studding-sails and skysails, burying the hull in canvas and looking like what the whalemen on the Banks, under their stump top-gallant-masts, call ``a Cape Horn-er under a cloud of sail.’’

Friday, August 12th.  At daylight made the island of Trinidad, situated in lat. 20 28’ S., lon. 29 08’ W. At twelve M., it bore N.W. 1/2 N., distant twenty-seven miles.  It was a beautiful day, the sea hardly ruffled by the light trades, and the island looking like a small blue mound rising from a field of glass.  Such a fair and peaceful-looking spot is said to have been, for a long time, the resort of a band of pirates, who ravaged the tropical seas.

Thursday, August 18th.  At three P.M., made the island of Fernando Naronha, lying in lat. 3 55’ S., lon. 32 35’ W.; and between twelve o’clock Friday night and one o’clock Saturday morning crossed the equator, for the fourth time since leaving Boston, in lon. 35 W.; having been twenty-seven days from Staten Land,—­ a distance, by the courses we had made, of more than four thousand miles.

We were now to the northward of the line, and every day added to our latitude.  The Magellan Clouds, the last sign of south latitude, had long been sunk, and the North Star, the Great Bear, and the familiar signs of northern latitudes, were rising in the heavens.  Next to seeing land, there is no sight which makes one realize more that he is drawing near home, than to see the same heavens, under which he was born, shining at night over his head.  The weather was extremely hot, with the usual tropical alternations of a scorching sun and squalls of rain; yet not a word was said in complaint of the heat, for we all remembered that only three or four weeks before we would have given our all to be where we now were.  We had a plenty of water, too, which we caught by spreading an awning, with shot thrown in to make hollows.  These rain squalls came up in the manner usual between the tropics.  A clear sky; burning, vertical sun; work going lazily on, and men about decks with nothing but duck trousers, checked shirts, and straw hats; the ship moving as lazily through the water; the man at the helm resting against the wheel, with his hat drawn over his eyes; the captain below, taking an afternoon nap; the passenger leaning over the taffrail, watching a dolphin following slowly in our wake; the