Page:A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions Vol 1.djvu/113

] out the best parallel in which to profit most by them, or, in stormy weather, how to avoid them.

After blowing from almost every point of the compass the wind settled in the north, and in order to get clear of the Aguilhas bank, on which we found a harassing jobble of a sea, we ran before it to the southward until midnight, when a calm of several hours' continuance was succeeded by a light southerly wind. At 1, when eighty-four miles S. by E. from the Cape, we had no soundings with six hundred fathoms. In trying the temperature of the sea, at various depths, we unfortunately lost two of our self-registering thermometers by the line breaking, which is the reason that these experiments were afterwards less frequently made than might have been desirable in the course of our voyage to Van Diemen's Land.

The southerly wind obliged us to stand to the eastward, and the whole of this and the following day we experienced a heavy swell, indicative of a past gale; but this, about midnight of the 9th, was changed into a short, irregular, breaking sea, which we considered to be probably occasioned by our falling down upon the western edge of the Aguilhas bank, for it continued throughout the night, and the next day we found ourselves in seventy-seven fathoms; some pieces of dead coral and broken shells came up with the lead. Both yesterday and to-day we passed through many long lines of brown-coloured animalculæ: they were about five or six feet broad and several miles in