with thirteen guns. At 3 P.M. the ship gets under way, and with a good
breeze, stands out to sea. Our parting letters are confided to the Pilot.
That weather-beaten veteran gives you a cordial shake with his broad, hard
hand, wishes you a prosperous cruise, and goes over the side. His life is
full of greetings and farewells; the grasp of his hand assures the
returning mariner that his weary voyage is over; and when the swift pilot
boat hauls her wind, and leaves you to go on your course alone, you feel
that the last connecting link with home is broken. On our ship's deck,
there were perhaps some heart-aches, but no whimpering. Few strain their
eyes to catch parting glimpses of the receding highlands; it is only the
green ones who do that. The Old Salt seeks more substantial solace in his
dinner. It is matter of speculation, moreover, whether much of the misery
of parting does not, with those unaccustomed to the sea, originate in the
disturbed state of their stomachs.

7.--We are in the Gulf-stream. The temperature of the water is ten degrees
above that of the air. Though the ship is deep, being filled with stores,
and therefore sailing heavily, we are yet taken along eleven knots by the
wind, and two or three more by the current. Swiftly as we fly, however, we
are not quite alone upon the waters. Mother Carey's chickens follow us
continually, dipping into the white foam of our track, to seize the food
which our keel turns up for them out of the ocean depths. Mysterious is
the way of this little wanderer over the sea. It is never seen on land;
and naturalists have yet to discover where it reposes, and where it
hatches its young; unless we adopt the idea of the poets, that it builds
its nest upon the turbulent bosom of the deep. It is a sort of nautical
sister of the fabled bird of Paradise, which was footless, and never
alighted out of the air. Hundreds of miles from shore, in sunshine and in
tempest, you may see the Stormy Petrel. Among the unsolvable riddles which
nature propounds to mankind, we may reckon the question, Who is Mother