502 
VOYAGE TO ENGLAND. 
[1814. 
tion of a share, we were all grumbling at the detention, 
and began to calculate how much expense was incurred 
by the fleet losing eighteen hours in officers and sea- 
men's wages, and interest of value of the cargoes ; and 
concluded that the six turtles which were caught would 
cost England two thousand pounds : but the idea of this 
loss never would have occurred to any on board, had we 
been permitted to go on shore. Two sleeping turtles 
passed our ship within a few yards, but being judged 
about six or seven hundred pounds weight, they were too 
heavy to be lifted into a boat, and were, with a general 
grudge, allowed to pass undisturbed. The small island 
of Ascension can never be inhabited, as it contains no 
spring of water, and the surface is almost entirely cover- 
ed with a kind of cinder, on which there is not the small- 
est verdure. It is chiefly inhabited by sea fowls and fe- 
male turtles, who repair thither to deposit their eggs ; but 
how such a stupid looking animal finds out this speck 
of land, in so extended an ocean, is truly wonderful : 
if it be by scent, one would suppose they could only 
smell it when on a line with it to the north, as the wind 
there always blows from the south : if the island gives 
a taste to the water for many miles round, and that 
taste be stronger as the island is approached, still the 
currents would be an obstruction to finding it out by 
taste. 
When within about five degrees of the line, the 
water through which the ship passed was at night so 
illuminated, that it seemed as if mingled w ith fiery 
meteor, and could a person have sat steadily on the 
