I question whether our navigators are yet sufficiently apprised of it. Piso, in his Natural History of the Brazils, says that the winds along shore are constantly to the northward from October to March, and to the southward from March to October. Dampier also, who certainly had as much experience as most men, says the same thing, advising ships outward bound to keep to the westward, where they are almost certain to find the trade more easterly than in mid-channel, where it is sometimes due south, or within half a point of it, as we ourselves experienced.
6th. Towards evening the colour of the water was observed to change, upon which we sounded and found ground at thirty-two fathoms. The lead was cast three times between six and ten without finding a foot's difference in the depth or quality of the bottom, which was encrusted with coral. We supposed this to be the tail of a great shoal laid down in all our charts by the name of Abrolhos, on which Lord Anson struck soundings on his outward bound passage.
7th. About noon long ranges of a yellowish colour appear upon the sea, many of them very large, one (the largest) might be a mile in length and three or four hundred yards in width. The seamen in general affirmed roundly that they were the spawn of fishes, and that they had often seen the same appearance before. Upon taking up some of the water thus coloured, we found it to be caused by innumerable small atoms, each pointed at the end, and of a yellowish colour, none of them above a quarter of a line in length. In the microscope they appeared to be fasciculi of small fibres interwoven one within the other, not unlike the nidi of some Phryganeæ, which we call caddises; what they were, or for what purpose designed, we could not even guess, nor so much as distinguish whether their substance was animal or vegetable.
8th. At daybreak to-day we made the land, which proved to be the Continent of South America, in latitude 21° 16′. About ten we saw a fishing-boat, whose occupants told us that the country formed part of the captainship of Espirito Santo.
