Northward A Darkish Blue Tint Was Observable On The Sky, The Rolling Of Our Small Vessel Was Violent And We Perceived Amidst The Dashing Of The Waves Two Seas Crossing Each Other, One The From North And The Other From North-North-East.

Waterspouts were formed at the distance of a mile and were carried rapidly from north-north-east to north-north-west.

Whenever the waterspout drew near us we felt the wind grow sensibly cooler. Towards evening, owing to the carelessness of our American cook, our deck took fire; but fortunately it was soon extinguished. On the morning of the 1st of December the sea slowly calmed and the breeze became steady from north-east. On the 2nd of December we descried Cape Beata, in a spot where we had long observed the clouds gathered together. According to the observations of Acherner, which I obtained in the night, we were sixty-four miles distant. During the night there was a very curious optical phenomenon, which I shall not undertake to account for. At half-past midnight the wind blew feebly from the east; the thermometer rose to 23.2 degrees, the whalebone hygrometer was at 57 degrees. I had remained upon the deck to observe the culmination of some stars. The full-moon was high in the heavens. Suddenly, in the direction of the moon, 45 degrees before its passage over the meridian, a great arch was formed tinged with the prismatic colours, though not of a bright hue. The arch appeared higher than the moon; this iris-band was near 2 degrees broad, and its summit seemed to rise nearly from 80 to 85 degrees above the horizon of the sea. The sky was singularly pure; there was no appearance of rain; and what struck me most was that this phenomenon, which perfectly resembled a lunar rainbow, was not in the direction opposite to the moon. The arch remained stationary, or at least appeared to do so, during eight or ten minutes; and at the moment when I tried if it were possible to see it by reflection in the mirror of the sextant, it began to move and descend, crossing successively the Moon and Jupiter. It was 12 hours 54 minutes (mean time) when the summit of the arch sank below the horizon. This movement of an arch, coloured like the rainbow, filled with astonishment the sailors who were on watch on the deck. They alleged, as they do on the appearance of every extraordinary meteor, that it denoted wind. M. Arago examined the sketch of this arch in my journal; and he is of opinion that the image of the moon reflected in the waters could not have given a halo of such great dimensions. The rapidity of the movement is no small obstacle in the way of explanation of a phenomenon well worthy of attention.

On the 3rd of December we felt some uneasiness on account of the proximity of a small vessel supposed to be a pirate but which, as it drew near, we recognized to be the Balandra del Frayle (the sloop of the Monk). I was at a loss to conceive what so strange a denomination meant. The bark belonged to a Franciscan missionary, a rich priest of am Indian village in the savannahs (Llanos) of Barcelona, who had for several years carried on a very lucrative contraband trade with the Danish islands. M. Bonpland and several passengers saw in the night at the distance of a quarter of a mile, with the wind, a small flame on the surface of the ocean; it ran in the direction of south-west and lighted up the atmosphere. No shock of earthquake was felt and there was no change in the direction of the waves. Was it a phosphoric gleam produced by a great accumulation of mollusca in a state of putrefaction; or did this flame issue from the depth of the sea, as is said to have been sometimes observable in latitudes agitated by volcanoes? The latter supposition appears to me devoid of all probability. The volcanic flame can only issue from the deep when the rocky bed of the ocean is already heaved up so that the flames and incandescent scoriae escape from the swelled and creviced part without traversing the waters.

At half-past ten in the morning of the 4th of December we were in the meridian of Cape Bacco (Punta Abacou) which I found in 76 degrees 7 minutes 50 seconds, or 9 degrees 3 minutes 2 seconds west of Nueva Barcelona. Having attained the parallel of 17 degrees, the fear of pirates made us prefer the direct passage across the bank of Vibora, better known by the name of the Pedro Shoals. This bank occupies more than two hundred and eighty square sea leagues and its configuration strikes the eye of the geologist by its resemblance to that of Jamaica, which is in its neighbourhood. It forms an island almost as large as Porto Rico.

From the 5th of December, the pilots believed they took successively the measurement at a distance of the island of Ranas (Morant Keys), Cape Portland and Pedro Keys. They may probably have been deceived in several of these distances, which were taken from the mast-head. I have elsewhere noted these measurements, not with the view of opposing them to those which have been made by able English navigators in these frequented latitudes, but merely to connect, in the same system of observations, the points I determined in the forests of the Orinoco and in the archipelago of the West Indies. The milky colour of the waters warned us that we were on the eastern part of the bank; the centigrade thermometer which at a distance from the bank and on the surface of the sea had for several days kept at 27 and 27.3 degrees (the air being at 21.2 degrees) sank suddenly to 25.7 degrees. The weather was bad from the 4th to the 6th of December:

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