426 THE LACCADIVES AND THE WEST COAST. 
Bassas de Pedro (and probably others yet undiscovered,) extend- 
ing far to the northward of Cherbaniani, but as none of these 
carry any where less than 10 fathoms over them, their in- 
spection did not fall within our instructions. 
One object that [ had in view in making this trip was to 
ascertain whether or no the Laccadives were separated by a 
deep trough from India—a matter which up to this time had 
remained uncertain. 
I had, therefore, indented on the Bombay dockyard for deep 
sea line, and they supplied some five or six thousand fathoms 
of splendid looking line. Our Captain, an old Porcupine man, 
entered most cordially unto my views, and soon after we left 
Bombay, took the line in hand and began testing and marking 
it. To our dismay it soon appeared that the line was in many 
places rotten. Whilst we lay at Pigeon Island, the Captain 
had a lot of it carefully picked over, all bad pieces picked out 
and the good carefully spliced together. By noon we had 
run down to Lat. 13°20 N. and Long. 73:17 E. en-route 
to Cherbaniani, which then remained about 100 miles distant. 
We hove to, to get a sounding; the Captain got 520 fathoms of 
the picked line, wound on a large hand-winch which he fixed 
in the stern of our large cutter, at the bows of which he rig- 
ged up a rough derrick and let ont the line with a 30fb lead. 
No bottom was found ; more line was picked over and spliced 
and at 4 p.M., when in N. Lat. 13°70 and E. Long. 73°10°30, we 
again tried, but our whole line 920 fathoms was run out without 
finding bottom, the line being well up and down, and the arma- 
ture of the lead coming up as clean as it went down. 
The accompanying sketch map shows the position in which 
these soundings were taken, as also that of the various islands 
of the group, and our track amongst them. 
Whilst we were hove to the first time, a Bo’sun’ came, in 
the usual inquisitive fashion of these birds, to see what we 
were up to, and poor fellow, as is not uncommon, paid a heavy 
penalty for not minding his own business. About 4 P. Mm. 
another came up and poked about above the mast heads for 
a few minutes, but somehow I missed him, though I had several 
(no doubt long) shots, and he sailed away and began fishing 
very composedly about 300 yards off, dropping into the water 
like a King-fisher, and hovering for a time before making a 
plunge much as this latter bird does, 
February 10th.—We hove to for the night to try and get 
another cast of the lead, and all hands were hard at work under 
the Captain’s personal supervision, in stretching, testing and 
cutting out all bad and doubtful portions of the line, so that by 
noon we had altogether nearly 3,000 fathoms on our winch. 
