A General History & Collection of Voyages and Travels ... - Nauticus

135° 11' W. Our observation to-day gave us reason to conjecture that we had a southerly current. Indeed,this was no more than what might reasonably be supposed, to account for such huge masses of ice beingbrought from the south. In the afternoon we had a few hours calm, succeeded by a breeze from the east,which enabled us to resume our N.W. by N. course.[9][9] "To-day, while we were observing the meridian altitude of the sun, a shower of snow came fromthe west, and passed a-head of the ship; during which, a large island of ice, considerably within thevisible horizon, and directly under the sun, was entirely hid by it; yet the horizon appeared asdistinct, and much the same as it usually does in dark hazy weather. When the shower was over, Ifound that it required the sun to be dipped something more than his whole diameter to bring hislower limb to the nearest edge of the ice island, which must have been farther off than the visiblehorizon, during the shower; and yet this would have been taken as the real horizon, without anysuspicion, if it had been every where equally obscure. Hence may be inferred the uncertainty ofaltitudes taken in foggy, or what seamen, in general, call hazy weather.--W.January 1st, the wind remained not long at east, but veered round by the south to the west; blew fresh,attended with snow showers. In the evening, being in the latitude of 58° 39' S., we passed two islands ofice, after which we saw no more till we stood again to the south.At five o'clock in the morning on the 2d, it fell calm; being at this time in the latitude of 58° 2', longitude137° 12'. The calm being succeeded by a breeze at east, we steered N.W. by W. My reason for steering thiscourse, was to explore part of the great space of sea between us and our track to the south.On the 3d, at noon, being in latitude 56° 46', longitude 139° 45', the weather became fair, and the windveered to S.W. About this time we saw a few small divers (as we call them) of the peterel tribe, which wejudged to be such as are usually seen near land, especially in the bays, and on the coast of New Zealand. Icannot tell what to think of these birds; had there been more of them, I should have been ready enough tobelieve that we were, at this time, not very far from land, as I never saw one so far from known landbefore. Probably these few had been drawn thus far by some shoal of fish; for such were certainly about us,by the vast number of blue peterels, albatrosses, and such other birds as are usually seen in the great ocean;all or most of which left us before night. Two or three pieces of seaweed were also seen, but theseappeared old and decayed.At eight o'clock in the evening, being in the latitude of 56° S., longitude 140° 31' W., the wind fixing in thewestern board, obliged us to steer north-easterly, and laid me under the necessity of leaving unexplored aspace of the sea to the west, containing near 40° of longitude, and half that of latitude. Had the windcontinued favourable, I intended to have run 15 or 20 degrees of longitude more to the west in the latitudewe were then in, and back again to the east in the latitude of 50°. This route would have so intersected thespace above mentioned, as hardly to have left room for the bare supposition of any land lying there.Indeed, as it was, we have little reason to believe that there is; but rather the contrary, from the greathollow swell we had had, for several days, from the W. and N.W., though the wind had blown from acontrary direction great part of the time; which is a great sign we had not been covered by any landbetween these two points.While we were in the high latitudes, many of our people were attacked with a slight fever, occasioned bycolds. It happily yielded to the simplest remedies; was generally removed in a few days; and, at this time,we had not above one or two on the sick list.[10]