Trade-lVinds, Rio Janeiro, the Polar Ice, b'c. 197 



rently frosty sky and foggy weather, rather higher. The degree 

 of temperature, as mentioned here, is to he referred to the time 

 between the hours of eight and eight in the day. These are only 

 a few of the innumerable instances of the extraordinary muta- 

 bility of temperature, to which not only sea-faring men but 

 sea-faring patients, in traversing distant seas, are in general ex- 

 posed. 



On the 17th, ISth, and particularly the 19th of June, while 

 near the tropic, and a little to the westward and eastward of 

 36" 15' west longitude, we fell in with considerable detuched 

 pieces of sea-weed, resembling a small white kind of berry, that 

 must have made their way with the current drifting ia this di- 

 rection out of the Gulf of Florida. 



While near the equator on our return, and as far as 18 west 

 longitude and 7° 45' north latitude, there were incessant torrent's 

 of rain with prevailing calms and occasional squalls ; among 

 which was remai-ked the grain llanc, formerly noticed by the in- 

 genious and unfortunate French circumnavigator. To steer clear 

 of these tremendous and highly sickening torrents, it is necessary 

 to cross the equator on the western side of, at least, its 25 th de- 

 gree, in the same direction ; because, as the sea-breeze, occa- 

 sioned by the dry and lieated continent of Africa, springs up at 

 an immense distance from the land, and the trade-winds com- 

 mence in the same or contiguous parts, the atmosphere, from its 

 being thus drained or attenuated, suffers an incessant or instan- 

 taneous descent of the vapours or clouds continually going on or 

 occasionally impelled thither from the remoter parts. 



In the horizons of these trackless regions are still to be seen 

 slave skips stealing along to the Portuguese, French and Spanish 

 settlements, notwithstanding all that has been said and done 

 concerning this iniquitous and infernal traffic. On Sunday the 

 6th of June, at about nine at night, in 7" 25' north latitude and 

 23° IG' west longitude, we fell in with, and detained until about 

 the same hour the following morning, the Roger (French slave- 

 ship) from Havre de Grace, having 230 negroes on board, con- 

 sisting of men, women and children, and bound from the river 

 Gabon to Havana, or the island of St. Thomas. She >vas ouc 

 48 days, lost her reckoning, was considerably short of water; all 

 her crew but three affected with a malignant oj)hthalmia, and 

 the hapless creatures devoted to slavery like to have their fate 

 averted in the successive deaths, that daily or frequently occurred, 

 in coiisecjuencc of confinement, and, as 1 was informed, priva- 

 tions in the mere common necessaries of subsistence, which, for 

 the honour of human natme, I hope was not the case. At any 

 rate, three of their dead bodies were committed to the deep early 

 in the aljovc morning of our separation. — Surely those barbarous 



N 3 and 



