Page:A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 1.djvu/261

Towards the Cape.] The fresh western winds continued, with short intervals of calm, as far as the latitude 33° 23′, and longitude 13° 0′ west; when they died away, and a breeze sprung up from the eastward. With this wind we could do little more than look up for the isles of Tristan d'Acunha, whose bearing was then S. 16° E., and distance seventy-seven leagues. From the description given by sir Erasmus Gower of the anchorage, and the convenience with which water may be obtained, and his account of the animals which resort there, I should not have considered it to be lost time, had the wind made it advisable to put in at Tristan d'Acunha, for a few days; but it veered round to the north-west, on the 6th, and we resumed our former course to the Cape of Good Hope.

In the morning of the 14th, the variation by mean of amplitude and azimuth, was 25° 10′ west; the ship's head being E. by S., and our latitude 35° 4′ south, and longitude 12° 50′ east. It is worthy of being mentioned, that in the year 1797, and near the same place, I observed the variation to be 19° 40′ west, on board His Majesty's ship Reliance; and as the compass was upon the binnacle in both cases, the sole cause to which I can attribute this great difference is, that the ship's head was west, instead of E. by S. The true variation could not be far from the mean of the two observations, since it was 26° at the Cape of Good Hope. In the English Channel, the