Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 1 (Stockdale).djvu/513

] to avoid being embayed on that dangerous coast. We afterwards lay to, for the whole night, keeping the ship's head towards the south and S.S.E.

There was a very heavy sea: the wind blew impetuously from the S.W. and the W.S.W. and increasing gradually, it raged with the greatest violence for almost the whole night, raising the waves to a prodigious height. We had never yet been so violently tossed by a tempest.

The south-west winds there are almost always impetuous, and add very much to the dangers to which ships are exposed, in coasting from west to east, along that low shore, frequently lined with shoals; and there is danger of their not being perceived soon enough to be able to double them.

When day-light appeared, we stood in for the land. A wind from W.S.W. brought us back fine weather.

Towards noon, we were in latitude 33° 49′ south, and longitude 122° 4′ east, when we saw from the mast-head, beyond several little islands, a part of the coast, extending from west to north-west, and which still appeared low. Presently it assumed the appearance of a bank, raised in a very uniform manner, trending towards the east, and intercepting our view of the land. At the approach of night, we clawed off shore, and afterwards lay to. 27th.