About thirty miles from San Francisco are the Farralone Islands, a favorite resort of sea-birds.  There they assemble in immense numbers, particularly at the commencement of their breeding season.

Parties go from San Francisco to gather sea-birds eggs at these islands, and for some weeks they supply the market.  These eggs are largely used in pastry, omelettes, and other things, where their character can be disguised, but they are far inferior to hens’ eggs for ordinary uses.

There were no islands in any part of our course, and we found but a single shoal marked on the chart.  We passed far to the north of the newly discovered Brooks Island, and kept southward of the Aleutian chain.  Since my return to America I have read the account of a curious discovery on an island of the North Pacific.  In 1816, the ship Canton, belonging to the East India Company, sailed from Sitka and was supposed to have foundered at sea.  Nothing was heard of her until 1867, when a portion of her wreck was found upon a coral island of the Sybille group.  The remaining timbers were in excellent preservation, and the place where the crew had encamped was readily discernible.  The frame of the main hatchway had been cast up whole, and a large tree was growing through it.  The quarter board bearing the word “Canton,” lay near it, and revealed the name of the lost ship.  No writing or inscription to reveal the fate of her crew, could be found anywhere.

[Illustration:  Wreck of the ship Canton.]

On Friday, July thirteenth, we crossed the meridian of 180 deg. from London, or half around the world.  We dropped a day from our reckoning according to the marine custom, and appeared in our Sunday dress on the morrow.  Had we been sailing eastward, a day would have been added to our calendar.  A naval officer once told me that he sailed eastward over this meridian on Sunday.  On the following morning the chaplain was surprised to receive orders to hold divine service.  He obeyed promptly, but could not understand the situation.  With a puzzled look he said to an officer—­

“This part of the ocean must be better than any other or we would not have Sunday so often.”

Sir Francis Drake, who sailed around the world in the time of Queen Elizabeth, did not observe this rule of the navigator, and found on reaching England that he had a day too much.  In the Marquesas Islands the early missionaries who came from the Indies made the mistake of keeping Sunday on Saturday.  Their followers preserve this chronology, while later converts have the correct one.  The result is, there are two Sabbaths among the Christian inhabitants of the cannibal islands.  The boy who desired two Sundays a week in order to have more resting time, might be accommodated by becoming a Marquesas colonist.

On the day we crossed this meridian we were three hundred miles from the nearest Aleutian Islands, and about eight hundred from Kamchatka.