Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/320

262 which were very distant, soon disappeared; but the third, which was about a league from us, lasted fully a quarter of an hour. It was a column which appeared of the thickness of a mast or a middling tree, and reached down from a smoke-coloured cloud about two-thirds of the way to the surface of the sea. Under it the sea appeared to be much troubled for a considerable space, and from the whole of that space arose a dark-coloured thick mist reaching to the bottom of the pipe, where it was at its greatest distance from the water. The pipe itself was perfectly transparent, and much resembled a tube of glass or a column of water, if such a thing could be supposed to be suspended in the air: it very frequently contracted and dilated, lengthened and shortened itself, and that by very quick motions. It very seldom remained in a perpendicular direction, but generally inclined either one way or the other in a curve, as a light body acted upon by the wind is observed to do. During the whole time that it lasted, smaller ones seemed to attempt to form in its neighbourhood; at last one almost as thick as a rope formed close by it, and became longer than the old one, which at that time was in its shortest state; upon this they joined together in an instant, and gradually contracting into the cloud, disappeared.

22nd. We stood in with the land, near enough to discern five people, who appeared through our glasses to be enormously black: so far did the prejudices which we had built on Dampier's account influence us, that we fancied we could see their colour when we could scarce distinguish whether or not they were men.

Since we have been on the coast, we have not observed those large fires which we so frequently saw in the islands and New Zealand, made by the natives in order to clear the ground for cultivation: we thence concluded not much in favour of our future friends. It has long been an observation among us, that the air in this southern hemisphere was much clearer than in our northern: these last few days at least it has appeared remarkably so.

23rd. Took with the dipping-net Cancer erythrophthalmus,