Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 1 (Stockdale).djvu/283

] bow, except that its colours were not so vivid. This phœnomenon is much less frequent than might naturally be expected.

The allowance of water was very small, which was a prodigious hardship in latitudes so near the Line; and we had not the means of procuring more; although we were provided with Doctor Poissonnier's apparatus for distilling sea-water. This contrivance was of no use to us, as it required much more fuel than we could spare; for when water is scarce on board ship, wood is never abundant.

About ten o'clock A.M. we descried the Arsacides, which we made near Cape Nepean. Those lands, discovered in 1767, by Captain Surville, in the service of the former French East India Company, were since seen by Shortland, who, thinking he had made a new discovery, gave them the name of New Georgia.

Our latitude at noon was 8° 52′ south, and our longitude 154° 38′ east. The nearest land then bore E. ¼ N.E. distant 15,000 toises.

9th. At half past four o'clock, we descried the rock called Eddy-stone, bearing north-west, distant about 8,000 toises. At a distance, we took it, as Shortland did, for a vessel under sail. The deception was the greater, as the colour of it is nearly