Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 1 (Stockdale).djvu/90

80 ea appeared during the whole night much more luminous than uual wherever it was agitated, particularly at the wake of the hip and the top of the waves.

The force of the gale had obliged us to trike our top-ails, and even to bear down, for fear of being taken a-back.

The heat had been very oppreive during the whole day. We were now ailing off the immene gulph formed by the coats of upper Guinea, the hores of which extend almot 1,500,000 toies to the eatward.

The ea is much more phophoric in the vicinity of the coats ituated between the tropics, than any where ele, becaue thoe animals, upon which its phophorecence depends, abound there much more than in any other part of the ocean: a fact which I have had opportunity of remarking in parts of the ocean very ditant from each other. I hall enter into ome invetigation of this phenomenon.

As we had this gulph under our lee, the currents had carried over to us many of the luminous ubtances with which it abounds; but it required the concurrence of another circumtance in order to produce o vivid a light as we witneed. The clouds that hung over the quarter from whence the wind aroe, had imparted to the atmophere