g on a voyage whose duration was
estimated at ten days, spent four months at sea, and indeed never again
entered harbor, for in the end she was cast away. Singular to tell, this
craft never encountered a gale, but was the vexed sport of malicious
calms and currents. Thrice, out of provisions, she put back to an
intermediate port, and started afresh, but only yet again to return.
Frequent fogs enveloped her; so that no observation could be had of her
place, and once, when all hands were joyously anticipating sight of
their destination, lo! the vapors lifted and disclosed the mountains
from which they had taken their first departure. In the like deceptive
vapors she at last struck upon a reef, whence ensued a long series of
calamities too sad to detail.

It was the famous pilot, Juan Fernandez, immortalized by the island
named after him, who put an end to these coasting tribulations, by
boldly venturing the experiment--as De Gama did before him with respect
to Europe--of standing broad out from land. Here he found the winds
favorable for getting to the South, and by running westward till beyond
the influences of the trades, he regained the coast without difficulty;
making the passage which, though in a high degree circuitous, proved far
more expeditious than the nominally direct one. Now it was upon these
new tracks, and about the year 1670, or thereabouts, that the Enchanted
Isles, and the rest of the sentinel groups, as they may be called, were
discovered. Though I know of no account as to whether any of them were
found inhabited or no, it may be reasonably concluded that they have
been immemorial solitudes. But let us return to Redondo.

Southwest from our tower lies all Polynesia, hundreds of leagues away;
but straight west, on the precise line of his parallel, no land rises
till your keel is beached upon the Kingsmills, a nice little sail of,
say 5000 miles.

Having thus by such distant references--with Rodondo the only possible
ones--settled our relative place on the sea, let us consider objects not
quite so remote. Behold the grim and charred Enchanted Isles. This
nearest crater-shaped headland is part of Albemarle, the largest of the
group, being some sixty miles or more long, and fifteen broad. Did you
ever lay eye on the real genuine Equator? Have you ever, in the largest
sense, toed the Line? Well, that identical crater-shaped headland there,
all yellow lava, is cut by the Equator exactly as a knife cuts stra