68 ATMOSPHERIC TEMPEUATURE. 



rapid advance of a black cloud in that quarter, 

 just as Captain King has described. 



At noon we were in lat. 18°26'8., long. 119" 18' E., 

 and in soundings of 75 fathoms, fine white sand, 

 broken shells, and fragments of dead coral. There 

 was only a slight variation in the atmospheric 

 temperature of two degrees during the twenty-four 

 hours,- the highest in the day being 85, and the 

 lowest at night 83. The water was very smooth, 

 but as night approached it thundered and lightened 

 heavily and vividly, and most of us noticed and 

 suffered from a particularly oppressive and over- 

 powering state of the atmosphere, which the heat 

 indicated by the thermometer was by no means 

 sufficiently intense to account for. 



January 14. — During the last twenty-four hours 

 we had made but 51 miles progress in the di- 

 rection of Roebuck Bay ; our noon observations 

 placed us in lat. 18° 25' S., long. 120° 13' E., being 

 about 80 miles from the nearest land. We ob- 

 tained soundings at 72 fathoms, — yellow sand and 

 broken shells. During the afternoon, it being 

 nearly a calm, we found ourselves surrounded by 

 quantities of fish, about the size of the mackarel, 

 and apparently in pursuit of a number of small and 

 almost transparent members of the finny tribe, not 

 larger than the minnow. 



We sounded at sunset, and found bottom at 52 

 fathoms, which shoaled by half-past ten to 39. The 

 circumstance, however, occasioned no surprise, as 



