We showed a Vulturine Parrot and a Kinkajou.  The Kinkajou, by the by, got loose one night, and displayed his natural inclination by instantly catching a rat, and dancing between decks with it in his mouth:  but was so tame withal, that he let the stewardess stroke him in passing.  The good lady mistook him for a cat; and when she discovered next morning that she had been handling a ’loose wild beast,’ her horror was as great as her thankfulness for the supposed escape.  In curious contrast to the natural tameness of the Kinkajou was the natural untameness of a beautiful little Night-Monkey, belonging to the purser.  Its great owl’s eyes were instinct with nothing but abject terror of everybody and everything; and it was a miracle that ere the voyage was over it did not die of mere fright.  How is it, en passant, that some animals are naturally fearless and tamable, others not; and that even in the same family?  Among the South American monkeys the Howlers are untamable; the Sapajous less so; while the Spider Monkeys are instinctively gentle and fond of man:  as may be seen in the case of the very fine Marimonda (Ateles Beelzebub) now dying, I fear, in the Zoological Gardens at Bristol.

As we got into colder latitudes, we began to lose our pets.  The Ant-eater departed first:  then the doctor, who kept his alligator in a tub on his cabin floor, was awoke by doleful wails, as of a babe.  Being pretty sure that there was not likely to be one on board, and certainly not in his cabin, he naturally struck a light, and discovered the alligator, who had never uttered a sound before, outside his tub on the floor, bewailing bitterly his fate.  Whether he ‘wept crocodile tears’ besides, the doctor could not discover; but it was at least clear, that if swans sing before they die, alligators do so likewise:  for the poor thing was dead next morning.

It was time, after this, to stow the pets warm between decks, and as near the galley-fires as they could be put.  For now, as we neared the ‘roaring forties,’ there fell on us a gale from the north-west, and would not cease.

The wind was, of course, right abeam; the sea soon ran very high.  The Neva, being a long screw, was lively enough, and too lively; for she soon showed a chronic inclination to roll, and that suddenly, by fits and starts.  The fiddles were on the tables for nearly a week:  but they did not prevent more than one of us finding his dinner suddenly in his lap instead of his stomach.  However, no one was hurt, nor even frightened:  save two poor ladies—­not from Trinidad--who spent their doleful days and nights in screaming, telling their beads, drinking weak brandy-and-water, and informing the hunted stewardess that if they had known what horrors they were about to endure, they would have gone to Europe in—­a sailing vessel.  The foreigners—­who are usually, I know not why, bad sailors—­soon vanished to their berths:  so did the ladies:  even those who were not ill jammed themselves into their berths, and lay there, for fear of falls and bruises; while the Englishmen and a coloured man or two—­the coloured men usually stand the sea well—­had the deck all to themselves; and slopped about, holding on, and longing for a monkey’s tail; but on the whole rather liking it.