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and fine ones they are too. I do not know how many we have now. We talk about getting some monkeys at Anjer when we get there. I wish we were to be there tomorrow. They reckon above 40 days now before we make it. We yesterday crossed the meridian of Greenwich and are now in East Longitude.
I could not help thinking all day yesterday what was going on at home and among my friends and relations since it is the same time with us here as it is in England. I very often visited them all round, and had a peep at what all were doing during the day. We shall soon be ahead of you now, and very soon when you get up in the morning we shall be at noon, taking our luncheon.
Saturday, May 18th
Yesterday we were within 200 miles of the Cape, but had to come to a stop and turn back on account of foul winds, so now we are going back again. If we had gone farther the current would have taken us no one knows where out of the way. We have now to go south for about 300 miles before we get round the Cape; and today the sea is as smooth as glass, and it is the calmest day we have had since leaving England. Still we hope for a wind soon, and I believe the men are "putting the ship round" to be ready for it. Tomorrow we shall have been out ten weeks, and with fair winds we ought to have been here in seven weeks. It is very disheartening.
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I have spent a good deal of time lately in study. In fact I am making it like college work, and thus the time goes very nearly as fast. I should like this very nearly as well as college if there were more society, and if I could hear from home once a week.
Yesterday I amused myself by fishing for birds. I manufactured a hook out of a bent pin, but that did not answer, so I tried a bent needle, but that being slender and brittle was soon gone. So I bent a large stocking needle and managed to make it do. I caught a cape pigeon by the wing and hauled him up and put him to death. A second one I dropped into the water before I could seize him. In the evening I caught another, but in killing it I made its feathers so dirty that it was useless. The first I skinned and should preserve it if I had the proper chemicals. I can have plenty of alum, but that I fear would not do, so I shall throw it overboard after the other. They are large birds with very thick plumage,