all our company were obliged to conform to this necessary restriction. The distilling machine improved by Mr. Irving, was likewise constantly employed, to supply at least some part of the quantity daily consumed.
Tuesday 24.On the 24th in the afternoon, the weather being fair and moderate, after a hard gale we caught nine albatrosses with a line and hook, baited with a bit of sheep's skin. Several of them measured above ten feet from tip to tip, between the expanded wings. The younger ones seemed to have a great mixture of brownish feathers, whereas the full-grown were almost entirely white except their wings, which were blackish, and their scapulars which were barred and sprinkled with dotted lines of black.
A large brown fish resembling the sun fish (tetrodon mola), was likewise seen close to the ship for a short space of time.
Sunday 29.On the the 29th the wind, which had for three or four days past blown a very strong gale, now encreased so much, that we ran during the last twenty-four hours, almost under the bare fore-sail. The sea at the same time ran very high, and frequently broke over the sloop, in which none of the cabins were prepared for such bad weather, our course from England to the Cape having been remarkably free of storms. The people, and especially persons not brought up to sea-affairs, were ignorant how to behave in this new situation; the prodigious rolling of the vesseltherefore
