Page:An account of a voyage to establish a colony at Port Philip in Bass's Strait.djvu/141

( 116 ) fair, and his bark is able to run before it; or, if it is foul, he consoles himself from day to day with, the certainty, that the longer it has continued so, the nearer it is to a change. At this season the prevailing winds, south of the parallel of 36° S. are westerly, which often blow with unabated violence for months together. The southern polar ices, which in summer are often found floating in large detached islands, as far as the latitude of 37°, are in the winter bound together or chained to the Antarctic rocks, and thus they withstand the force of the winds and currents; their neighbourhood is, however, evinced by the degree of cold which gradually increases from the tropic, till in the latitude of 40°, where the thermometer falls to 50°, with showers of sleet and hail. Quitting