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call pancakes which I never eat. Sunday nights are the worst and some
times they save up what they call sweet soup made of prunes and preserved
apricots in a liquid so sickly sweet that I never eat. Bread and tea or
coffee with most of the meals. The brown bread I eat and always drink
water. Milk (????) is served with the porridge - one tin of condensed
milk to a bucketful of water. Those meals never vary. The other few do
sometimes. The spuds (bought in Port Victoria and probably the cheapest they
could buy) are the worst I've ever seen and give Australia a badname as
everyone says Aus potatoes are no good. It takes about 6 to get two good
ones. Nice menu isn't it? I forgot to mention that at least I can
say I've seen Africa. Before we rounded the Hope we were within 10 or 15
miles we passed East London a town of 60,000 inhabitants so cloase (about 5
miles) that the lights were plainly visible - you've no idea how nice it is to
see land occasionally. I am writing all this on a Thursday because its
a holiday for Ascension day in Aland and so we have one on the ship. The
English boys say its a holiday in England too but I never heard tell of it in
Australia.
Thursday June 11th. We are now 10° North; 27° West and on the last stage of
the journey for we picked up the north-east trades yesterday and tack
north west to 40° North where we'll get the west winds and we
should see the Lizard at Land's End in about 25 or 30 days. We
were 76 days to the Line which we crossed on Thurs. 4th and have just
left the Doldrums behind. It is an entirely windless area, with
much rain and many squalls which take the ship in all
directions, usually. A ship would spend weeks there trying