Dec.25th.-Christmas-Day Dawned Upon Us With Gusts Of Wind,
Driving Rain, Thunder And Lightning, Added To Which A Short
Confused Sea Made Our Queer Vessel Pitch And Roll Very
Uncomfortably.
About nine o'clock, however, it cleared up, and we
then saw ahead of us the fine island of Bouru, perhaps forty or
fifty miles distant, its mountains wreathed with clouds, while
its lower lands were still invisible.
The afternoon was fine, and
the wind got round again to the west; but although this is really
the west monsoon, there is no regularity or steadiness about it,
calms and breezes from every point of the compass continually
occurring. The captain, though nominally a Protestant, seemed to
have no idea of Christmas-day as a festival. Our dinner was of
rice and curry as usual, and an extra glass of wine was all I
could do to celebrate it.
Dec. 26th. - Fine view of the mountains of Bouru, which we have
now approached considerably. Our crew seem rather a clumsy lot.
They do not walk the deck with the easy swing of English sailors,
but hesitate and stagger like landsmen. In the night the lower
boom of our mainsail broke, and they were all the morning
repairing it. It consisted of two bamboos lashed together, thick
end to thin, and was about seventy feet long. The rigging and
arrangement of these praus contrasts strangely with that of
European vessels, in which the various ropes and spars, though
much more numerous, are placed so as not to interfere with each
other's action.
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