we all share.

_Sunday, November 5th_.--Fine, and considerably hotter, though not
unpleasantly so. We had the Litany at eleven, and evening prayers and
a sermon at four o'clock. Not a single ship has passed within sight
since we left Valparaiso, and the only living creatures we have seen
are some albatrosses, a few white boobies, a cape-hen, the little
petrels already mentioned, a shoal of porpoises, and two whales.

_Monday, November 6th_.--Passed, at 3 a.m. to-day, a large barque,
steering south, and at 8 a.m. a full-rigged ship, steering the same
course. We held--as we do with every ship we pass--a short
conversation with her through the means of the mercantile code of
signals. (This habit of exchanging signals afterwards proved to have
been a most useful practice, for when the report that the 'Sunbeam'
had gone down with all hands was widely circulated through England, I
might almost say the world,--for we found the report had preceded us
by telegram to almost all the later ports we touched at,--the anxiety
of our friends was relieved many days sooner than it would otherwise
have been by the fact of our having spoken the German steamer
'Sakhara,' in the Magellan Straits, Oct. 13, four days after we were
supposed to have gone to the bottom.) The weather continues fine, and
we have the same light baffling winds. We hoped, when we started, to
average at least 200 miles a day, but now we have been a week at sea,
and have only made good a little more than 700 miles altogether,
though we have sailed over 800 miles through the water. It is,
however, wonderful, in the opinion of the navigators, that we have
made even as much progress as this, considering the very adverse
circumstances under which the voyage has so far been performed, and we
must endeavour to console ourselves with the reflection that the