Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 1 (Stockdale).djvu/519

] At four o'clock no land could be seen, even from the mast-head; and, at the same time, a line of thirty fathoms reached a bottom of fine sand, mixed with broken shells and lythophites. The lead was hove every two hours, and each time it was found that the depth increased two or three fathoms; insensibly augmenting with our distance from the coast.

6th. At six this evening, being then 102,000 toises from the land, a line of seventy-two fathoms indicated a bottom of very fine sand mixed with gravel; and from that moment, no bottom was found, though we sounded at different times. This gradual augmentation of the depth of the sea near that coast, proves that the land subsides under the water by an almost insensible declivity, and gives us reason to believe, that it rises in the interior by an acclivity equally gentle, so that those heights are too distant to be perceived from the coast.

8th. We were carried on the 7th, 23′ to the westward, and this day 21′ in the same direction. At noon, we were in 35° 30′ south latitude. The rapidity of those currents towards the west, perhaps depends on some channel, which separates the lands of New Holland and those of Cape Diemen, between Point Hick and Furneaux's Islands.