The two green paroquets, ‘Coco’ and ‘Meta,’ given to me by Mr. Fisher at Rosario, have turned out dear little pets, with the most amusing ways.  They are terrible thieves, especially of sugar, pencils, pens, and paper, and being nearly always at liberty, they follow me about just like dogs, and coax and caress me with great affection.  They do not care much for any one else, though they are civil to all and good-tempered even to the children, who, I am afraid, rather bore them with their attempts at petting.  The other foreign birds, of which I have a large collection, are doing well, and I begin to hope I shall get them home safely after all.  We had at one time about twenty parrots, belonging to the men, on board, all running about on deck forward, with their wings clipped, but about half of them have been lost overboard.  The dogs keep their health and spirits wonderfully.  Felise is quite young again, and she and Lulu have great games, tearing up and down and around the decks as hard as they can go.

Sunday, November 19th.—­I am convalescent at last, and appeared at breakfast this morning for the first time for ten days.

The wind was very variable throughout the day.  Between 6 and 7 a.m. we were going twelve knots; between 7 and 8 only three; but as we never stop, we manage to make up a fair average on the whole.

At eleven o’clock we had the Communion Service and two hymns.  At midday the week’s work was made up, with the following result.  Our position was in lat. 15 deg. 38’ S., long. 117 deg. 52’ W.; we were 3,057 miles from Valparaiso,—­1,335 of which had been accomplished since last Sunday,—­and 1,818 miles from Tahiti.

To-day we were not far from Easter Island, the southernmost island of Polynesia.  Here as in the Ladrones, far away in the north-west quarter of the Pacific, most curious inscriptions are sometimes found carved in stone.  Annexed is a photograph taken from one I saw at a later stage of the voyage.

[Illustration:  Inscription from Easter Island]

The sails had been flapping, more or less, all day, and at the change of the dog-watches, at six o’clock, Tom ordered the men aft to stow the mizen.  This they had scarcely begun to do when a light breeze sprang up, and in a few minutes increased to a strong one, before which we bowled along at the rate of nine knots.  These sudden changes are of constant occurrence, and, coming as they do without the slightest warning, are quite inexplicable.  If only we had our old square sails, and our bigger yards and topmast, we should have saved a good deal of time already; for one or two knots an hour extra amount to from 25 to 50 miles a day, and in a month’s run the difference would not be far short of 1,500 miles.  But we heard so much from people in England, who had visited these parts, of squalls and hurricanes, that Tom did not like to run the risk of being over-sparred, especially with a wife and children as passengers.