APPROACH TO XOISAGO. 
137 
Longitude from that of my time. This difference was owing 
less to the general current, which I have called the current 
of rotation, than to that particular movement, which, draw- 
ing the waters toward the north-west, from the coast of 
Brazil to the Antilles, shortens the passage from Cayenne to 
Guadaloupe.* On the 12th of July, I thought I might fore- 
tell our seeing land next day before sunrise. We were then, 
according to my observations, in latitude 10° 46', and west 
longitude 60° 54'. A few series of lunar distances confirmed 
the chronometrical result ; but we were surer of the position 
of the vessel, than of that of the land to which we were 
directing our course, and which was so differently marked in 
the Trench, Spanish, and English charts. The longitudes 
deduced from the accurate observations of Messrs. Churruca, 
Fidalgo, and Noguera, were not then published. 
The pilots trusted more to the log than the timekeeper ; 
they smiled at the prediction of so speedily making land, 
and thought themselves two or three days’ sail from the 
coast. It was therefore with great pleasure, that on the 
13th, about six in the morning, I learned that very high 
land was seen from the mast-head, though not clearly, as 
it was surrounded with a thick fog. The wind blew hard, 
and the sea was very rough. Large drops of rain fell at 
intervals, and every indication menaced tempestuous wea- 
ther. The captain of the Pizarro intended to pass through 
the channel which separates the islands of Tobago and 
Trinidad ; and knowing that our sloop was very slow in 
tacking, he was afraid of falling to leeward towards the 
south, and approaching the Boca del Drago. We were 
in fact surer of our longitude than of our latitude, having 
had no observation at noon since the 11th. Double alti- 
tudes which I took in the morning, after Douwcs’s method, 
placed us in 11° 6' 50*, consequently 15' north of our 
reckoning. Though the result clearly proved that the high 
land on the horizon was not Trinidad, but Tobago, yet 
* In tlie Atlantic Ocean there is a space where the water is constantly 
milky, though the sea is very deep. This curious phenomenon exists in 
the parallel of the island of Dominica, very near the 57th degree of longi- 
tude. May there not be in this place some sunken volcanic islet, more 
easterly still than Barbadoes ? 
