One of the
lads who came in his boat, a thoroughly countrified-looking fellow,
seemed to care very little about the vessel, rigging, or anything
else, but went round looking at the live stock, and leaned over the
pig-sty, and said he wished he was back again tending his father's
pigs.
At eight o'clock we altered our course to the northward, bound for
Juan Fernandez.
This day we saw the last of the albatrosses, which had been our
companions a great part of the time off the Cape. I had been
interested in the bird from descriptions which I had read of it, and
was not at all disappointed. We caught one or two with a baited hook
which we floated astern upon a shingle. Their long, flapping wings,
long legs, and large staring eyes, give them a very peculiar
appearance. They look well on the wing; but one of the finest sights
that I have ever seen, was an albatross asleep upon the water,
during a calm, off Cape Horn, when a heavy sea was running. There
being no breeze, the surface of the water was unbroken, but a long,
heavy swell was rolling, and we saw the fellow, all white, directly
ahead of us, asleep upon the waves, with his head under his wing;
now rising on the top of a huge billow, and then falling slowly
until he was lost in the hollow between.
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