appeared large. Both yesterday and to-day we also took several ichneumons flying about the rigging. All the seamen say that we cannot be less than twenty leagues from the land, but I doubt Grylli, especially, coming so far alive, as they must float all the way upon the water. The sailors ground their opinion chiefly on the soundings, the bottom being continuously of sand of different colours, which, had we been nearer the land, would have been intermixed with shells. Their experience of this coast must, however, be slight.
Lat. 42° 31′. A sea-lion was entered in the log-book as being seen to-day, but I did not see it. I saw, however, a whale, covered with barnacles as the seamen told me. It appeared of a reddish colour, except the tail, which was black like those to the northward.
31st. No insects seen to-day; the water changed to a little better colour. On looking over the insects taken yesterday I find thirty-one land species, all so like in size and shape to those of England that they are scarcely distinguishable from the latter; probably some will turn out identically the same. We ran among them 160 miles by the log, without reckoning any part of last night, though they were seen till dark. We must be now nearly opposite to "Baye sans fond,"[1] near which place Mr. Dalrymple supposes that there is a passage quite through the continent of America. It would appear by what we have seen that there is at least a very large river, probably at this time much flooded, although it is doubtful whether even that could have so great an effect (supposing us to be twenty leagues from the land) as to render the water almost of a clay colour, and to bring insects such as Grylli and an Aranea, which never fly twenty yards. I lament much not having tasted the water at the time, which never occurred to me, but probably the difference of saltness would have been hardly perceptible to the taste, and my hydrostatic balance being broken I had no other method of trying it.
2nd January 1769. Met with some small shoals of red
- ↑ Probably the Gulf of San Mathias.
