CHAP. III.] BAHIA TO THE CAPE. 131 



wound up to tlie highest pitch : some vowed that they saw rest- 

 ing on the beam of the vanishing trawl the white hand of the 

 niermaiden for whom we had watched so long in vain ; but I 

 think it is more likely that the trawl had got bagged with the 

 large sea-slugs which occur in some of these deej) dredgings in 

 large quantity, and have more than once burst the trawl net. 



At 6.45 r.M. we made all plain sail, and shaped our course to 

 the south-east. 



"We sounded and trawled on the 6th in 2275 fathoms, with a 

 muddy bottom and a bottom temperature of 0°*7 C, and ob- 

 tained a series of temperature soundings at intervals of 100 

 fathoms down to 1000. The trawl came up nearly empty, con- 

 taining only an ear-bone of a whale with one or two hydroid 

 zoophytes attached to it, and a few pebbles of pumice, one hav- 

 ing on it a large flask-shaped foraminifer or other allied rhizo- 

 pod, living. 



The depth on the 10th was 2050 fathoms, the bottom an im- 

 pure globigerina ooze, and the bottom temperature 1°*1 C. We 

 were, therefore, beginning the ascent of the western flank of the 

 great central elevation of the Atlantic. The temperature de- 

 terminations had throughout the whole of this section been of 

 the greatest interest ; the lowest temperatures which we had 

 met with previously had been in the neighborhood of Fernando 

 Noronha, nearly under the equator (4-0°-2 C); we were moral- 

 ly certain that this cold water welled up from the Antarctic Sea 

 in the western trough of the Atlantic, and we fully expected to 

 intersect the line of the supply. In this, however, we were dis- 

 appointed. We met with no temperature so low as the lowest 

 temperature under the equator (-|-0°-2 C.) ; and it was only 

 three years afterward, on our northward voyage, that we struck 

 the main body of the cold indraught. 



On the 11th we sounded in 1900 fathoms with a bottom of 

 globigerina ooze and a bottom temperature of l°-3 C, and put 

 over the trawl, and during its absence took a series of shallow 



