Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/124

66 having the weather so cloudy that the observation was good for little or nothing.

16th. Our water which had been taken on board at Terra del Fuego has remained until this time perfectly good without the least change, which I am told is very rare, especially when, as in our case, water is brought from a cold climate into a hot one; ours, however, has stood it without any damage, and drinks as brisk and pleasant as when first taken on board, or better, for the red colour it had at first has subsided, and it is now as clear as any English spring water.

20th. When I look on the charts of these seas, and mark our course, which has been nearly straight at N.W. since we left Cape Horn, I cannot help wondering that we have not yet seen land. It is, however, some pleasure to be able to disprove that which only exists in the opinions of theoretical writers, as are most of those who have written anything about these seas without having themselves been in them. They have generally supposed that every foot of sea over which they believed no ship to have passed to be land, although they had little or nothing to support that opinion, except vague reports, many of them mentioned only as such by the authors who first published them. For instance, the Orange Tree, one of the Nassau fleet, having been separated from her companions, and driven to the westward, reported on her joining them again that she had twice seen the Southern continent; both these places are laid down by Mr. Dalrymple many degrees to the eastward of our track, yet it is probable that he put them down as far to the westward as he thought it possible that the Orange Tree could have gone.

To strengthen these weak arguments another theory has been started, according to which as much of the South Sea as its authors call land must necessarily be so, for otherwise this world would not be properly balanced, since the quantity of earth known to be situated in the northern hemisphere would not have a counterpoise in this. The number of square degrees of their land which we have already changed into