22 ENGLAND TO RIO DE JANEIRO CHAP, i 



I question whether our navigators are yet sufficiently apprised 

 of it. Piso, in his Natural History of the Brazils, says that 

 the winds along shore are constantly to the northward from 

 October to March, and to the southward from March to 

 October. Dampier also, who certainly had as much ex- 

 perience as most men, says the same thing, advising ships 

 outward bound to keep to the westward, where they are 

 almost certain to find the trade more easterly than in mid- 

 channel, where it is sometimes due south, or within half a 

 point of it, as we ourselves experienced. 



6th. Towards evening the colour^ of the water was 

 observed to change, upon which we sounded and found 

 ground at thirty-two fathoms. The lead was cast three 

 times between six and ten without finding a foot's difference 

 in the depth or quality of the bottom, which was encrusted 

 with coral. We supposed this to be the tail of a great shoal 

 laid down in all our charts by the name of Abrolhos, on which 

 Lord Anson struck soundings on his outward bound passage. 



*lth. About noon long ranges of a yellowish colour appear 

 upon the sea, many of them very large, one (the largest) 

 might be a mile in length and three or four hundred yards 

 in width. The seamen in general affirmed roundly that 

 they were the spawn of fishes, and that they had often seen 

 the same appearance before. Upon taking up some of the 

 water thus coloured, we found it to be caused by innumerable 

 small atoms, each pointed at the end, and of a yellowish 

 colour, none of them above a quarter of a line in length. 

 In the microscope they appeared to be fasciculi of small 

 fibres interwoven one within the other, not unlike the nidi 

 of some Phryganece, which we call caddises ; what they were, 

 or for what purpose designed, we could not even guess, nor 

 so much as distinguish whether their substance was animal 

 or vegetable. 



Sth. At daybreak to-day we made the land, which 

 proved to be the Continent of South America, in latitude 

 21 16'. About ten we saw a fishing-boat, whose occupants 

 told us that the country formed part of the captainship of 

 Espirito Santo. 



