We swung up and down on the billows, till we scarcely knew which way to stand.  The most grave and sober personages suddenly found themselves reeling in a very undignified manner, and not a few measured their lengths on the slippery decks.  Boxes and barrels were affected in like manner; everything danced around us.  Trunks ran out from under the berths; packages leaped down from the shelves; chairs skipped across the rooms, and at table, knives, forks and mugs engaged in a general waltz and break down.  One incident of this kind was rather laughable.  One night, about midnight, the gale, which had been blowing violently, suddenly lulled, “as if,” to use a sailor’s phrase, “it had been chopped off!” Instantly the ship gave a tremendous lurch, which was the signal for a general breaking loose.  Two or three others followed, so violent, that for a moment I imagined the vessel had been thrown on her beam ends.  Trunks, crockery and barrels went banging down from one end of the ship to the other.  The women in the steerage set up an awful scream, and the German emigrants, thinking we were in terrible danger, commenced praying with might and main.  In the passage near our room stood several barrels, filled with broken dishes, which at every lurch went banging from side to side, jarring the board partition and making a horrible din.  I shall not soon forget the Babel which kept our eyes open that night.

The 19th of May a calm came on.  Our white wings flapped idly on the mast, and only the top-gallant sails were bent enough occasionally to lug us along at a mile an hour.  A barque from Ceylon, making the most of the wind, with every rag of canvass set, passed us slowly on the way eastward.  The sun went down unclouded, and a glorious starry night brooded over us.  Its clearness and brightness were to me indications of America.  I longed to be on shore.  The forests about home were then clothed in the delicate green of their first leaves, and that bland weather embraced the sweet earth like a blessing of heaven.  The gentle breath from out the west seemed made for the odor of violets, and as it came to me over the slightly-ruflled deep, I thought how much sweeter it were to feel it, while “wasting in wood-paths the voluptuous hours.”

Soon afterwards a fresh wind sprung up, which increased rapidly, till every sail was bent to the full.  Our vessel parted the brine with an arrowy glide, the ease and grace of which it is impossible to describe.  The breeze held on steadily for two or three days, which brought us to the southern extremity of the Banks.  Here the air felt so sharp and chilling, that I was afraid we might be under the lee of an iceberg, but in the evening the dull gray mass of clouds lifted themselves from the horizon, and the sun set in clear, American beauty away beyond Labrador.  The next morning we were enveloped in a dense fog, and the wind which bore us onward was of a piercing coldness.  A sharp look-out was kept on the bow, but as we could see but a short distance, it might have been dangerous had we met one of the Arctic squadron.  At noon it cleared away again, and the bank of fog was visible a long time astern, piled along the horizon, reminding me of the Alps, as seen from the plains of Piedmont.