Strange To Say, The Weather Was Never At All
Oppressively Hot After Latitude 2 Degrees North, Or Thereabouts.
A fine
wind, or indeed a light wind, at sea removes all unpleasant heat even of
the hottest and most perpendicular sun.
The only time that we suffered
any inconvenience at all from heat was during the belt of calms; when
the sun was vertically over our heads it felt no hotter than on an
ordinary summer day. Immediately, however, upon leaving the tropics the
cold increased sensibly, and in latitude 27 degrees 8 minutes I find
that I was not warm once all day. Since then we have none of us ever
been warm, save when taking exercise or in bed; when the thermometer was
up at 50 degrees we thought it very high and called it warm. The reason
of the much greater cold of the southern than of the northern hemisphere
is that the former contains so much less land. I have not seen the
thermometer below 42 degrees in my cabin, but am sure that outside it
has often been very much lower. We almost all got chilblains, and
wondered much what the winter of this hemisphere must be like if this
was its summer: I believe, however, that as soon as we get off the
coast of Australia, which I hope we may do in a couple of days, we shall
feel a very sensible rise in the thermometer at once. Had we known what
was coming, we should have prepared better against it, but we were most
of us under the impression that it would be warm summer weather all the
way. No doubt we felt it more than we should otherwise on account of
our having so lately crossed the line.
The great feature of the southern seas is the multitude of birds which
inhabit it. Huge albatrosses, molimorks (a smaller albatross), Cape
hens, Cape pigeons, parsons, boobies, whale birds, mutton birds, and
many more, wheel continually about the ship's stern, sometimes in
dozens, sometimes in scores, always in considerable numbers. If a
person takes two pieces of pork and ties them together, leaving perhaps
a yard of string between the two pieces, and then throws them into the
sea, one albatross will catch hold of one end, and another of the other,
each bolts his own end and then tugs and fights with his rival till one
or other has to disgorge his prize; we have not, however, succeeded in
catching any, neither have we tried the above experiment ourselves.
Albatrosses are not white; they are grey, or brown with a white streak
down the back, and spreading a little into the wings. The under part of
the bird is a bluish-white. 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.
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