Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 1 (Stockdale).djvu/157

] Mozambique, generally meet with violent torms. The gradual fall of the mercury in the barometer to the amount of eight lines, whilt the north-eat winds blew from this gulph, gave us a preage of a till more violent hurricane. The clouds contained uch a uperabundance of electric matter, that though our conductors helped to draw off a portion of it, the lightning frequently truck into the water at the ditance of a few yards from our veel. A gale from the eat, which brought back fair weather, was preceded by a rie of two lines in the mercury of the barometer. On the 1t of March, the ea was welled to uch a height by this gale, that we often lot ight of our conort behind the billows. This veel, een at the ditance of two or three hundred toies, preented a magnificent pectacle; ometimes it appeared buried in the waves; again it emerged, and mounted to the very ummit of the urge, hewing a great part of its keel above the water.

3d. As the well abated, we knew that we had ailed beyond the mouth of the channel of Mozambique; for, although the wind continued to blow with nearly the ame violence as on the preceding days, the ea, being heltered by the coats of Madagacar, became very tranquil. We aw a prodigious quantity of the fucus pyriformis, the larget