etceteras - the several layers of his contents escaped one after another, like a mountain discharging through a crater,
leaving him only a body entirely excavated. We congratulated him, for he was much better afterward.
The first night the wind was against us, so that the captain was on the point of heading for some English port. On
the Loth we saw Calais light. We passed the strait on a very stormy night, and came near being thrown upon the
coast of France. All this day the deck had the appearance
of a hospital. A mournful silence reigned, broken only by occasional groans, or bursts of laughter provoked by the strange attitude taken by some individual, prone on the deck
and reduced to extremity. The good sisters, though more or less inconvenienced themselves, displayed an astonishing activity to serve the sick. Their inexhaustible charity sufficed for everything.
Favored by a good breeze, we outstripped all the vessels that had raised anchor ahead of us on the 9th. Toward two in the afternoon an enormous fish appeared in sight - a little sample of the numerous whales, whose spouts were to divert us in the gloomy and dangerous region of the Ant
arctic Circle. On the 12th we observed the Isle of Wight. On the 13th we found ourselves near Plymouth, and after we had admired at night the lighthouse of the Lizard, the Atlantic Ocean received its guests, on the 14th of the month.
The motion of the ship was too violent to allow us to celebrate holy mass until the 18th. On that day we all had the happiness of receiving communion, and all met at dinner, for the first time since we had left the Schelde. On the loth the Island of Madeira came in sight. This island was discovered in 1419, and called Madeira because it was covered with forests. The thermometer stood at 75° F. On the loth a calm came upon us: the sea was like a mirror, and was wrinkled by a prodigious number of fish, among which the souflleur [grampus?] especially attracted our notice by the foam he raised in the water and the noise of his blowing. The fishes of Europe indicate by their