mity as the
unpleasantness and discomfort of a storm at sea.

BRIG "OLGA," AT SEA,
_July 27, 1865_.

I used often to wonder, while living in San Francisco, where the
chilling fogs that toward night used to drift in over Lone Mountain
and through the Golden Gate came from. I have discovered the
laboratory. For the past two weeks we have been sailing continually in
a dense, wet, grey cloud of mist, so thick at times as almost to hide
the topgallant yards, and so penetrating as to find its way even into
our little after-cabin, and condense in minute drops upon our clothes.
It rises, I presume, from the warm water of the great Pacific Gulf
Stream across which we are passing, and whose vapour is condensed
into fog by the cold north-west winds from Siberia. It is the most
disagreeable feature of our voyage.

Our life has finally settled down into a quiet monotonous routine of
eating, smoking, watching the barometer, and sleeping twelve hours a
day. The gale with which we were favoured two weeks ago afforded
a pleasant thrill of temporary excitement and a valuable topic of
conversation; but we have all come to coincide in the opinion of the
Major, that it was a "curious thing," and are anxiously awaiting the
turning up of something else. One cold, rainy, foggy day succeeds
another, with only an occasional variation in the way of a head wind
or a flurry of snow. Time, of course, hangs heavily on our hands. We
are waked about half-past seven in the morning by the second mate, a
funny, phlegmatic Dutchman, who is always shouting to us to "turn out"
and see an imaginary whale, which he conjures up regularly before
breakfast, and which invariably disappears before we can get on deck,
as mysteriously as "Moby Dick." The whale, however, fails to draw
after a time, and he resorts to an equally mysterious and eccentric
sea-serpent, whose wonderful appearance he describes in comical broken
English with the vain hope that we will crawl out into the raw foggy
atmosphere to look at it. We never do. Bush opens his eyes, yawns, and
keeps a sleepy watch of the breakfast table, which is situated in the
captain's cabin forward. I cannot see it from my berth, so I watch
Bush. Presently we hear the humpbacked steward's footsteps on the deck
above our heads, and, with a quick succession of little bumps, half a
dozen boiled potatoes come rolling down the stairs of the companionway
into the cabin. They are the forerunners of breakfast. Bush