Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 1 (Stockdale).djvu/281

] mity is in 17° 54′ of south latitude, and 160° 30′ of east longitude, and about ten leagues to the north of Moulin's Island.

It was easy for us to perceive, by the force of the waves, that we were disengaged from the reefs.

A great number of tropical birds, boobies and man-of-war birds, quitting their retreats in the different little islands, came and played in airy circles about the ship, almost the whole day. We saw the trunks of several cocoa-nut trees floating, which had been torn by the waves from the place of their growth.

About six in the evening, the lead indicated fifty-eight fathoms depth of water, with a bottom of fine sand, our latitude having then been 17° 51′ south, and our longitude, 160° 18′ east. We remained an hour upon that bank, where we hove the lead several times, and had from fifty to sixty-six fathoms in depth.

Thus we completed the discovery of a dreadful chain of reefs, so much the more dangerous towards the north, as they are wholly out of sight of land. Although they appeared to us interrupted, to the northward of New Caledonia, it is probable, notwithstanding what we observed, that they are re-united farther to the eastward.

Those reefs, are well known to be the work of polypi;