as once
known as the "horse latitudes," because many years ago vessels from
Connecticut were in the habit of taking deck-loads of horses to the
West India islands, and it not unfrequently happened that these vessels,
being for the most part dull sailers, were so long detained in those
latitudes that their hay, provender, and water were expended, and the
animals died of hunger and thirst.

The Dolphin was a week in crossing three degrees of latitude. Indeed it
was a calm during a considerable portion of that time. This drew largely
on the patience of the captain, mate, and all hands. There are few
things so annoying to a sailor at sea as a calm. A gale of wind, even a
hurricane, with its life, its energy, its fury, though it may bring
the conviction of danger, is preferred by an old sailor to the dull,
listless monotony of a calm.

These slow movements in the "horse latitudes" were not distasteful to
me. A calm furnished abundant food for curiosity. The immense fields of
gulf-weed, with their parasitical inhabitants, that we now began to
fall in with; the stately species of nautilus, known as he Portuguese
man-of-war, floating so gracefully, with its transparent body and
delicate tints; and the varieties of fish occasionally seen, including
the flying-fish, dolphin, boneta, and shark, all furnish to an inquiring
mind subjects of deep and abiding interest. My wonder was also excited
by the singularly glassy smoothness of the surface of the water in a
dead calm, while at the same time the long, rolling waves, or "seas,"
kept the brig in perpetual motion, and swept past as if despatched by
some mysterious power on a mission to the ends of the earth.

Several kinds of fish that are met with on the ocean are really
palatable, and find a hearty welcome in the cabin and the forecastle. To
capture these denizens of the deep, a line, to which is attached a large
hook baited with a small fish, or a piece of the rind of pork, shaped
to resemble a fish, is sometimes kept towing astern in pleasant weather.
This was the custom on board the Dolphin; and one afternoon, when the
brig, fanned by gentle zephyrs, hardly had "steerage way," my attention
was aroused by an exulting shout from the man at the helm, followed by a
solemn asserveration, that "a fish was hooked at last."

All was bustle and excitement. Discipline was suddenly relaxed, and the
captain, mate, and crew mounted the taffrail forthwith to satisfy their
curiosity in re