“......That evening, some twenty albatrosses being congregated like a flock of geese round the
ship’s stern, we succeeded in catching some of them, the first we had caught on the voyage. We
would have let them go again, but the sailors think them good eating, and begged them of us, at
the same time prophesying two day’s foul wind for every albatross taken. Again, the wind fell
tantalisingly light, but we kept drawing slowly toward land. In the beautiful sunset sky, crimson and
gold, blue, silver and purple, exquisite and tranquillising, lay ridge behind ridge, outline behind
outline, sunlight behind shadow, shadow behind sunlight, gully and serrated ravine. Hot puffs of
wind kept coming from the land, and there were several fires burning. I got my arm-chair on deck
and smoked a quiet pipe with the intensest satisfaction ......”
[Samuel Butler, a diary entry dated 26 January 1860 describing his arrival in Lyttelton on the Roman
Emperor].
