THE first introduction of my readers to the good ship Wales, whereby we pass to the Pacific, is as she is lying off and on in Berkley's Sound, at the islands called Foul Weather Group, otherwise named Falkland, after an English lord. Cape Horn weather here begins, and the ship and her company put on their Cape Horn suit; which, so far as some of our men are concerned, is quite as unique and nondescript as the notable "White Jacket."

This group is so near to the gate of the Pacific, though belonging to the Atlantic side, that an account of a ramble over the moss-covered rocks and penguin roosts of the uninhabited land, off which we now lie,

is no inappropriate introduction to the island world we are just entering. In the language of seamen, this is our first land-fall after seventy-six day's sailing from New York; and one can easily guess at the pleasure we have had in making it, when for eleven weeks the eye has been looking upon nothing but sky and water, with now and then a passing sail. As Maximilian feelingly says, in the Piccolomini,

Whate'er in the inland dales the land conceals

Of fair and exquisite, O! nothing, nothing
Do we behold of that in our rude voyage.

Floating kelp-weed, ducks, and albatrosses, the discoloration of the sea, and a peculiar fishy odor, like that exhaled from salt flats and spawn, had for several days warned us of our proximity to land. It was dimly discovered this morning about three o'clock, near the time of summer sun-rising in this high southern latitude. As the wind headed us off from our course to Cape Horn, and was fair either to enter or leave this Sound, the captain was persuaded to put in for a few hours, and send the boat ashore: a favor he was not unwilling to grant, the harbor being accurately surveyed and laid down on the chart, and the depth of water and the boldness of the shore such, that a ship can safely lie-to, and be ready at once for departure without the detention of weighing anchor. We doubled Cape St. Vincent, the easternmost point of this group of islands, about twelve; and after dinner the boat was lowered, and nine of us in all put off for the cliffs, which had seemed in the distance, and through the spy-glass, studded with white stones. Ducks, geese, and various other, birds, hovered over,

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and flew close to us, all unaware of the fatal instruments that were leveled with such cruel precision by some of our number, that eight or ten were shot on the wing, and many more on the water.

Selecting a small indentation or bight in the cliff as a landing-place, what was our surprise to find what we had thought a facing of white stones to be innumerable penguins, standing erect, in the rank and file of battle array, upon the declivity of the rocks, and occupying at least two acres, in dense columns, away back to the moss and grass. Where the rock was nearly perpendicular, or its face jagged and broken, on every out-jutting angle or hollow, there was a duck's nest, with the bird sitting upon it, and so unacquainted with man, that we could climb up and lay hands upon them before they would move.

The limestone cliffs were in many places perforated with caves, one of which we explored two or three hundred feet, and found it dripping with dissolved carbonate of lime, and giving evidence of being broken in upon by the sea in easterly winds. It was upward of fifty feet high at the mouth, and singularly groined, like the architecture of the Goths; its roof as if some vast force from beneath had lifted up and ruptured in the middle the superincumbent strata.

With a basket on arm, to hold flowers and mineralogical specimens, it was no easy task to clamber up the steep precipice. But the height once gained, the verdant knolls, hillocks of moss, and various wild flowers that met the eye, more than repaid the toil of ascent. There were tufts of grass and wild daisies in every cleft where mold could form; and higher