Page:A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2.djvu/170

162 at noon. In the morning they were set forward, and altitudes of the sun taken to find their errors from the time under this meridian. The moon and planet Mars had been observed in the night, from which, and the noon's observation following, the latitude of the anchorage was ascertained to be 16° 7½′; and a projection on the west side of the R. Van Alphen, which had been the nearest shore at the preceding noon, was now set at S. 64½° E. From these data and from the log, I ascertained the difference of longitude, from half past ten in the morning of the 11th, when the last observations for the time keepers had been taken, to be 20′ 18″; and that this anchorage was in 137° 37′ 18″ east. The errors from mean Greenwich time were thence obtained; and they were carried on as before, with the rates found at Sweers' Island, which it was to be presumed, had undergone no alteration from the letting down, since none had been caused by former accidents of the same kind. An amplitude taken when the ship's head was W.N.W., gave variation 3° 46′, or 1° 47′ east, corrected to the meridian; being nearly a degree less than on the east side of the River Van Alphen, when the land lay to the west of the ship.

Soon after seven o'clock, the anchor was weighed; and the breeze being at N.W., we stretched off till noon, when the observed latitude from both sides was 16° 2′ 11″, and the land was nine or ten miles distant; but the only part visible from the deck was the range of low hills, two or three leagues behind the shore. We then tacked to the westward, and kept closing in with the coast until sunset; at which time the corrected variation was 1° 47′ east, as on the preceding evening, and the following bearings were taken. Beyond the head, much higher land than any we had passed in the gulph, was seen from aloft as far as N.W. by N. This I expected was the Cape Vanderlin of the old chart; and if so, there ought to