September 3 Tuesday – Sept. 3. In 9° 50’ north latitude, at breakfast. Approaching the equator on a long slant. Those of us who have never seen the equator are a good deal excited. I think I would rather see it than any other thing in the world. We entered the “doldrums” last night — variable winds, bursts of rain, intervals of calm, with chopping seas and a wobbly and drunken motion to the ship — a condition of things findable in other regions sometimes, but present in the doldrums always. The globe-girdling belt called the doldrums is 20 degrees wide, and the thread called the equator lies along the middle of it [FE Ch. IV p.65].

Sam’s notebook entry of this date:

“Under the Southern Cross.” Get this mess of self-complacent twaddle [Gribben 43; NB 35 TS 41].. Note: Maturin Murray Ballou’s Under the Southern Cross; or, Travels in Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, Samoa, and Other Pacific Islands (1888).