Straits of Magellan near Virgin Cape. But the commodore did not wish to enter upon this winding passage, so we directed our course round Cape Horn.
The crew thought him right. Was it at all likely that the narwhal would be encountered in the sinuous strait? A number of the sailors declared that the monster was too big to pass it.
Upon the afternoon of July 6th the Abraham Lincoln doubled the solitary island—that isolated rock at the extremity of the American continent named Horn by the Dutch sailors who discovered it, in compliment to their native town. The course now lay N.W., and next day the frigate’s screw beat the waves of the Pacific Ocean.
“Keep your eyes open now,” cried the sailors to each other. And they did very considerably.
Eyes and telescopes—somewhat dazzled, it is true, by the prospect of the $2,000—rested not a minute. Day and night the ocean was scanned, and those who had night-glasses, whose facilities of seeing increased their opportunities fifty per cent, had a good chance of gaining the reward.
For myself, though the money was no attraction, I was not the least attentive of those on board. Giving but a few minutes to meals or repose, careless of the sun or wind, I scarcely quitted the deck. Sometimes perched in the nettings on the forecastle, sometimes on the poop-rail, I watched with anxious eyes the creamy wake of the frigate. And often have I partaken of the emotions of the officers and crew when some capricious whale elevated his black back above the surface of the waves. The deck of the frigate was crowded in an
