158 cook's voyage to march, 



and some man-of-war birds, made us keep a sharp 

 look-out for land. Toward evening, the wind lessened, 

 and the north-east swell, which, on the 16th and 17th, 

 had been so heavy as to make the ships labour ex- 

 ceedingly, was much abated. The next day, we saw 

 no appearance of land ; and at noon, we steered a 

 point more to the southward, viz. west by south, in 

 the hopes of rinding the trade-winds (which blew 

 almost invariably from the east by north) fresher as 

 we advanced within the tropic. It is somewhat sin- 

 gular, that though we saw no birds in the forenoon, 

 yet toward evening we had again a number of 

 boobies and man-of-war birds about us. This seemed 

 to indicate, that we had passed the land from whence 

 the former flights had come, and that we were 

 approaching some other low island. 



The wind continued very moderate, with fine 

 weather, till the 23d, when it freshened from the 

 north-east by east, and increased to a strong gale, 

 which split some of our old sails, and made the run- 

 ning rigging very frequently give way. This gale 

 lasted twelve hours ; it then became more moderate, 

 and continued so, till the 25th at noon, when we 

 entirely lost it, and had only a very light air. 



On the 26th in the morning, we thought we saw 

 land to the west south-west, but, after running about 

 sixteen leagues in that direction, we found our mis- 

 take ; and night coming on, we again steered west. 

 Our latitude, at this time, was 19° 45', which was the 

 greatest southing we made in this run ; our longitude 

 was 183°, and variation 12° 45' E. We continued 

 in this course, with little alteration in the wind, till 

 the 29th, when it shifted to the south-east and south 

 south-east, and, for a few hours in the night, it was 

 in the west ; the weather being dark and cloudy, 

 with much rain. We had met, for some days past, 

 several turtles, one of which was the smallest 1 ever 

 saw, not exceeding three inches in length. We were 



