It
Was Impossible To Look At The Sea Without Noticing Its Very Singular
Appearance.
Soon a wind springing up raised the waves and obliterated
the more manifest features of the current, but for two or three days
afterwards we could perceive it more or less.
There is always at this
time of year a strong westerly set here. The wind was the commencement
of the S.E. trades, and was welcomed by all with the greatest pleasure.
In two days more we reached the line.
We crossed the line far too much to the west, in longitude 31 degrees 6
minutes, after a very long passage of nearly seven weeks, such as our
captain says he never remembers to have made; fine winds, however, now
began to favour us, and in another week we got out of the tropics,
having had the sun vertically overhead, so as to have no shadow, on the
preceding day. Strange to say, the weather was never at all
oppressively hot after latitude 2 degrees north, or thereabouts. A fine
wind, or indeed a light wind, at sea removes all unpleasant heat even of
the hottest and most perpendicular sun. The only time that we suffered
any inconvenience at all from heat was during the belt of calms; when
the sun was vertically over our heads it felt no hotter than on an
ordinary summer day. Immediately, however, upon leaving the tropics the
cold increased sensibly, and in latitude 27 degrees 8 minutes I find
that I was not warm once all day.
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