This tract of ocean was once known as the "horse latitudes," because many years ago vessels from Connecticut were in the habit of taking deck-loads of horses to the West India islands, and it not unfrequently happened that these vessels, being for the most part dull sailers, were so long detained in those latitudes that their hay, provender, and water were expended, and the animals died of hunger and thirst.
The Dolphin was a week in crossing three degrees of latitude.

Indeed it was a calm during a considerable portion of that time.

This drew largely on the patience of the captain, mate, and all hands.

There are few things so annoying to a sailor at sea as a calm.

A gale of wind, even a hurricane, with its life, its energy, its fury, though it may bring the conviction of danger, is preferred by an old sailor to the dull, listless monotony of a calm.
These slow movements in the "horse latitudes" were not distasteful to me.