In due time all had been done that was requisite, and the Lexington put to sea and resumed her voyage.  In October we approached Cape Horn, the first land descried was Staten Island, white with snow, and the ship seemed to be aiming for the channel to its west, straits of Le Maire, but her course was changed and we passed around to the east.  In time we saw Cape Horn; an island rounded like an oven, after which it takes its name (Ornos) oven.  Here we experienced very rough weather, buffeting about under storm stay-sails, and spending nearly a month before the wind favored our passage and enabled the course of the ship to be changed for Valparaiso.  One day we sailed parallel with a French sloop-of-war, and it was sublime to watch the two ships rising and falling in those long deep swells of the ocean.  All the time we were followed by the usual large flocks of Cape-pigeons and albatrosses of every color.  The former resembled the common barn-pigeon exactly, but are in fact gulls of beautiful and varied colors, mostly dove-color.  We caught many with fishing-lines baited with pork.  We also took in the same way many albatrosses.  The white ones are very large, and their down is equal to that of the swan.  At last Cape Horn and its swelling seas were left behind, and we reached Valparaiso in about sixty days from Rio.  We anchored in the open roadstead, and spent there about ten days, visiting all the usual places of interest, its foretop, main-top, mizzen-top, etc.  Halleck and Ord went up to Santiago, the capital of Chili, some sixty miles inland, but I did not go.  Valparaiso did not impress me favorably at all.  Seen from the sea, it looked like a long string of houses along the narrow beach, surmounted with red banks of earth, with little verdure, and no trees at all.  Northward the space widened out somewhat, and gave room for a plaza, but the mass of houses in that quarter were poor.  We were there in November, corresponding to our early spring, and we enjoyed the large strawberries which abounded.  The Independence frigate, Commodore Shubrick, came in while we were there, having overtaken us, bound also for California.  We met there also the sloop-of-war levant, from California, and from the officers heard of many of the events that had transpired about the time the navy, under Commodore Sloat, had taken possession of the country.

All the necessary supplies being renewed in Valparaiso, the voyage was resumed.  For nearly forty days we had uninterrupted favorable winds, being in the “trades,” and, having settled down to sailor habits, time passed without notice.  We had brought with us all the books we could find in New York about California, and had read them over and over again:  Wilkes’s “Exploring Expedition;” Dana’s “Two Years before the Mast;” and Forbes’s “Account of the Missions.”  It was generally understood we were bound for Monterey, then the capital of Upper California.  We knew, of course, that General Kearney was enroute for the