7.--We are in the Gulf-stream. The temperature of the water is ten degrees above that of the air. Though the ship is deep, being filled with stores, and therefore sailing heavily, we are yet taken along eleven knots by the wind, and two or three more by the current. Swiftly as we fly, however, we are not quite alone upon the waters. Mother Carey's chickens follow us continually, dipping into the white foam of our track, to seize the food which our keel turns up for them out of the ocean depths. Mysterious is the way of this little wanderer over the sea. It is never seen on land; and naturalists have yet to discover where it reposes, and where it hatches its young; unless we adopt the idea of the poets, that it builds its nest upon the turbulent bosom of the deep. It is a sort of nautical sister of the fabled bird of Paradise, which was footless, and never alighted out of the air. Hundreds of miles from shore, in sunshine and in tempest, you may see the Stormy Petrel. Among the unsolvable riddles which nature propounds to mankind, we may reckon the question, Who is Mother Carey, and where does she rear her chickens?
9.--We are out of the Gulf-stream, and the ship is now rolling somewhat less tumultuously than heretofore. For four days, we have been blest with almost too fair a wind. A strong breeze, right aft, has been taking us more than two hundred and forty miles a day on our course. But the incessant and uneasy motion of the ship deprives us of any steady comfort. In spite of all precautions, tables, chairs, and books, have tumbled about in utter confusion, and the monotony is enlivened by the breaking of bottles and crash of crockery. As some consolation, our Log Book shows that we have made more than half of a thousand miles, within the last forty-eight hours. Land travelling, with all the advantages of railroads, can hardly compete with the continual diligence of a ship before a prosperous breeze.
11.--Spoke an American brig from Liverpool, bound for New York. Though the boat was called away, and our letters were ready, it was all at once determined not to board her; and, after asking the captain to report us, we stood on our course again. The newspapers will tell our friends something of our whereabouts; or, at least, that on a certain day, we were encountered at a certain point upon the sea.