TRAVELS IN BRAZIL 



121 



leaky by some negligence in stowing its cargo of 

 oil of vitriol, took refuge on Trinidad. The crew 

 sent the long boat to ask assistance at Rio de 

 Janeiro, but before it arrived they were delivered 

 from this fearful solitude by a North American 

 who took them on board and landed them on the 

 Cape of Good Hope. A disagreeable though by 

 no means alarming circumstance occurred to us 

 here ; a servant on board carelessly emptied into 

 the sea the vessel in which several specimens of 

 the Proteus anguinus, wliich we had brought from 

 the lake of Ziriknitz, had hitherto remained alive 

 and unchanged, and we were thus deprived of the 

 result of the whole observation of the continued 

 hifluence of the tropical climate on the develop- 

 ment of these enigmatical animals. 



On the 10th of July, when in 20° 49' south lati- 

 tude, and 39° 24' west longitude of Greenwich, 

 we quitted the region of the western variation of the 

 magnetic needle, which had regularly decreased 

 since our departure from Europe, and entered that 

 of the eastern. The thermometer now began to 

 fall gradually from 18^ 1?°, to 16°. On the fol- 

 lowing day we met a small vessel, the first which 

 had come so near us in the ocean that we could 

 hail her. On our firing a gun and hoisting our 

 colours, it hastened up and gave us the agreeable 

 information that the insurrection at Pernambuco, 

 of which we had heard at Gibraltar, had been im- 

 mediately quelled, and that political tranquillity and 



