66 TERRA DEL FUEGO TO OTAHITE CHAP, IV 
having the weather so cloudy that the observation was good 
for little or nothing. 
16h. Our water which had been taken on board at 
Terra del Fuego has remained until this time perfectly good 
without the least change, which I am told is very rare, 
especially when, as in our case, water is brought from a cold 
climate into a hot one; ours, however, has stood it without 
any damage, and drinks as brisk and pleasant as when first 
taken on board, or better, for the red colour it had at first 
has subsided, and it is now as clear as any English spring 
water. 
20th. When I look on the charts of these seas, and 
mark our course, which has been nearly straight at N.W. 
since we left Cape Horn, I cannot help wondering that we 
have not yet seen land. It is, however, some pleasure to 
be able to disprove that which only exists in the opinions 
of theoretical writers, as are most of those who have written 
anything about these seas without having themselves been 
in them. They have generally supposed that every foot of 
sea over which they believed no ship to have passed to be 
land, although they had little or nothing to support that 
opinion, except vague reports, many of them mentioned only 
as such by the authors who first published them. For 
instance, the Orange Tree, one of the Nassau fleet, having 
been separated from her companions, and driven to the 
westward, reported on her joining them again that she had 
twice seen the Southern continent; both these places are 
laid down by Mr. Dalrymple many degrees to the eastward 
of our track, yet it is probable that he put them down as 
far to the westward as he thought it possible that the 
Orange Tree could have gone. 
To strengthen these weak arguments another theory has 
been started, according to which as much of the South Sea 
as its authors call land must necessarily be so, for otherwise 
this world would not be properly balanced, since the quantity 
of earth known to be situated in the northern hemisphere 
would not have a counterpoise in this. The number of square 
degrees of their land which we have already changed into 
