Jerry by Walter Aimwell

"We sailed from Valparaiso on the 4th of July," continued Jerry. "I was / in hopes we should stay in port one day more, for the Americans were / going to have a jolly celebration of Independence; but we were all ready, / and the wind was fair, so we sailed early in the morning. It was the / middle of winter, but we had not seen any ice, and it was about as warm / as it is here in October. We soon got into colder weather, though. I / remember one night, when we were a few days out, the air grew very cold, / and we discovered an immense iceberg right in our track. It was all of a / hundred and fifty feet high, above water, and I should think it must have / been a mile round it. We made out just to clear it, and that was all. / There had been a thick fog for a day or two before, and if we had come / across the iceberg then, we should have gone pell-mell right into it, and / I reckon that would have been the end of us. Perhaps it would have been / better for us if we had run into it, for the weather was calm, and we / were near the coast, and might have saved ourselves in the boats.

"We made a pretty good run down the coast till we got into the / neighborhood of the Horn, and then our troubles began again. We were / beating about, off the cape, for about a month, before we got around it; / and all the time it was cold, stormy, and rough. It was more wintry, / and the days were shorter, than when we first doubled the cape. But we / finally got into the Atlantic, and began to steer north. We thought the / worst of the voyage was over now, and we did have very good luck until we / got into the latitude of the Rio de la Plata. Do you know where that is, / Emily?"