of Esox scomboides leaping out of the water in a very extraordinary manner, pursued by a large fish, which I saw but could not strike, though I did two of the former. In the evening saw several fish much resembling bonitos.
The weather we have had for these nine days past, and the things we have seen upon the sea, are so extraordinary that I cannot help recapitulatng a little. The weather, in the first place, which till the fifth was cool, or rather cold, became at once troublesomely hot, bringing with it a mouldy dampness such as we experienced between the tropics: the thermometer, although it showed a considerable difference in the degree of heat, was not nearly so sensible of it as our bodies, which I believe is generally the case when a damp air accompanies warmth. During the continuance of this weather the inhabitants of the tropical seas appeared: the tropic bird, flying fish, and Medusa porpita are animals very rarely seen out of the influence of trade winds. Several others also I have never before seen in so high a latitude, and never before in such perfection as now, except between the tropics. All these uncommon appearances I myself can find no other method of accounting for than the uncommon length of time that the wind had remained in the eastern quarter before this, which possibly had all that time blown home from the trade wind; and at the same time, as it kept the sea in a quiet and still state, had brought with it the produce of the climate from which it came.
19th. With the first daylight this morning the land[1] was seen; it made in sloping hills covered in part with trees or bushes, but interspersed with large tracts of sand. At noon we were sailing along shore, five or six leagues from it, with a brisk breeze of wind and cloudy unsettled weather, when we were called upon deck to see three waterspouts which made their appearance at the same time in different places, but all between us and the land. Two,
- ↑ To the southward of Cape Howe. The most southerly land seen was by Captain Cook called Point Hicks. It is not a point, but a hill, still called Point Hicks Hill (Wharton's Cook, p. 237, note).
