sheet" in his bed and the "flowing sea" all over the cabin floor,
and our experience illustrates not so much the sublimity as the
unpleasantness and discomfort of a storm at sea.

BRIG "OLGA," AT SEA,
_July 27, 1865_.

I used often to wonder, while living in San Francisco, where the
chilling fogs that toward night used to drift in over Lone Mountain
and through the Golden Gate came from. I have discovered the
laboratory. For the past two weeks we have been sailing continually in
a dense, wet, grey cloud of mist, so thick at times as almost to hide
the topgallant yards, and so penetrating as to find its way even into
our little after-cabin, and condense in minute drops upon our clothes.
It rises, I presume, from the warm water of the great Pacific Gulf
Stream across which we are passing, and whose vapour is condensed
into fog by the cold north-west winds from Siberia. It is the most
disagreeable feature of our voyage.

Our life has finally settled down into a quiet monotonous routine of
eating, smoking, watching the barometer, and sleeping twelve hours a
day. The gale with which we were favoured two weeks ago afforded
a pleasant thrill of temporary excitement and a valuable topic of
conversation; but we have all come to coincide in the opinion of the
Major, that it was a "curious thing," and are anxiously awaiting the
turning up of something else. One cold, rainy, foggy day succeeds
another, with only an occasional variation in the way of a head wind
or a flurry of snow. Time, of course, hangs heavily on our hands. We
are waked about half-past seven in the morning by the second mate, a
funny, phlegmatic Dutchman, who is always shouting to us to "turn out"