They remain without moving the wing a
longer time than any bird that I have ever seen, but some suppose that
each individual feather is vibrated rapidly, though in very small space,
without any motion being imparted to the main pinions of the wing.
I am
informed that there is a strong muscle attached to each of the large
plumes in their wings. It certainly is strange how so large a bird
should be able to travel so far and so fast without any motion of the
wing. Albatrosses are often entirely brown, but farther south, and when
old, I am told, they become sometimes quite white. The stars of the
southern hemisphere are lauded by some: I cannot see that they surpass
or equal those of the northern. Some, of course, are the same. The
southern cross is a very great delusion. It isn't a cross. It is a
kite, a kite upside down, an irregular kite upside down, with only three
respectable stars and one very poor and very much out of place. Near
it, however, is a truly mysterious and interesting object called the
coal sack: it is a black patch in the sky distinctly darker than all
the rest of the heavens. No star shines through it. The proper name
for it is the black Magellan cloud.
We reached the Cape, passing about six degrees south of it, in twenty-
five days after crossing the line, a very fair passage; and since the
Cape we have done well until a week ago, when, after a series of very
fine runs, and during as fair a breeze as one would wish to see, we were
some of us astonished to see the captain giving orders to reef topsails.
The royals were stowed, so were the top-gallant-sails, topsails close
reefed, mainsail reefed, and just at 10.45 p.m., as I was going to bed,
I heard the captain give the order to take a reef in the foresail and
furl the mainsail; but before I was in bed a quarter of an hour
afterwards, a blast of wind came up like a wall, and all night it blew a
regular hurricane.
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