A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels | Page 9

with a terrible sea, and the ship laboured so much, that, to ease her, I
ordered the two foremost and two aftermost guns to be thrown
overboard: The gale continued with nearly equal violence all the rest of
the day, and all night, so that we were obliged to lie-to under a
double-reefed main-sail; but in the morning, it being more moderate,
and veering from N.W. to S. by W. we made sail again, and stood to
the westward. We were now in latitude 35°50'S. and found the weather
as cold as it is at the same season in England, although the month of
November here is a spring month, answering to our May, and we were
near twenty degrees neater the Line: To us, who within little more than
a week had suffered intolerable heat, this change was most severely felt:
And the men who, supposing they were to continue in a hot climate
during the whole voyage, had contrived to sell not only all their warm
clothes, but their bedding, at the different ports where we had touched,

now applied in great distress for slops, and were all furnished for the
climate.
On Friday the 2d of November, after administering the proper oaths to
the lieutenants of both ships, I delivered them their commissions; for
till this time they acted only under verbal orders from me, and expected
to receive their commissions in India, whither they imagined we were
bound. We now began to see a great number of birds about the ship,
many of them very large, of which some were brown and white, and
some black: There were among them large flocks of pintadoes, which
are somewhat larger than a pigeon, and spotted with black and white.
On the 4th, we saw a great quantity of rock weed, and several seals:
The prevailing winds were westerly, so that being continually driven to
the eastward, we foresaw that it would not be easy to get in with the
coast of Patagonia. On the 10th, we observed the water to change
colour, but we had no ground with one hundred and forty fathom. The
next day we stood in for the land till eight in the evening, when we had
ground of red sand with forty-five fathom. We steered S.W. by W. all
night, and the next morning had fifty-two fathom with the same ground:
Our latitude now being 42°34' S., longitude 58°17' W., the variation
11°1/4 E.
On Monday the 12th, about four o'clock in the afternoon, as I was
walking on the quarter-deck, all the people upon the forecastle called
out at once, "Land right a-head;" it was then very black almost round
the horizon, and we had had much thunder and lightning; I looked
forward under the fore-sail, and upon the lee-bow, and saw what at first
appeared to be an island, rising in two rude craggy hills, but upon
looking to leeward I saw land joining to it, and running a long way to
the south-east: We were then steering S.W. and I sent officers to the
mast-head to look out upon the weather-beam, and they called out that
they saw land also a great way to the windward. I immediately brought
to, and sounded; we had still fifty-two fathom, but I thought that we
were embayed, and rather wished than hoped that we should get clear
before night. We made sail and steered E.S.E. the land still having the
same appearance, and the hills looking blue, as they generally do at a
little distance in dark rainy weather, and now many of the people said

that they saw the sea break upon the sandy beaches; but having steered
out for about an hour, what we had taken for land vanished all at once,
and to our astonishment appeared to have been a fog-bank. Though I
had been almost continually at sea for seven-and-twenty years, I had
never seen such a deception before; others, however, have been equally
deceived; for the master of a ship not long since made oath, that he had
seen an island between the west end of Ireland and Newfoundland, and
even distinguished the trees that grew upon it Yet it is certain that no
such island exists, at least it could never be found, though several ships
were afterwards sent out on purpose to seek it. And I am sure, that if
the weather had not cleared up soon enough for us to see what we had
taken for land disappear, every man on board would freely have made
oath, that land had been discovered in this situation.
The next day, at four o'clock in the afternoon, the weather being
extremely fine, the wind shifted at once to the S.W. and began to blow
fresh, the sky at the same time