DECEMBER 14.
At noon to-day we found ourselves in the latitude of Jamaica.
We were promised the sight of Antigua on Sunday next, but
that is now quite out of the question. We made but eight miles
in the whole of yesterday ; and as Jamaica is still at the distance
of eighteen hundred miles, at this rate of proceeding we may
expect to reach it about eight months hence. The sky this
evening presented us with quite a new phenomenon, a rose
colored moon : she is to be at her full to-morrow; and this
afternoon, about half-past four, she rose like a disk of silver,
perfectly white and colourless ; but as she was exactly opposite
sun at the time of his setting, the reflection of his rays
a kind of pale blush over her orb, which produced an
t as beautiful as singular. Indeed, the size and inconceivable
brilliance of the sun, the clearness of the atmosphere, which
assumed a faint greenish line, and was entirely without a
cloud, the smoothness of the ocean, and the aforesaid rose-coloured moon
altogether rendered
this sunset the most magical
in effect that I ever beheld ; and it was with great reluctance
that I was called away from admiring it to ascertain whether the
merits of our new acquaintance, the dolphin, extended any further
than his skin. Part of him, which was boiled for yesterday's
dinner, was rather coarse and dry, and might have been
mistaken for indifferent haddock. But his having been steeped
in brine, and then broiled with a good deal of pepper and salt ,
had improved him wonderfully, and to-day I thought him as good
as any other fish.
