and give us an opportunity to make what observations we pleased in quiet.
We caught here a prodigious quantity of the finest fish that I had ever before seen, but the silly Rais greatly troubled our enjoyment, by telling us, that many of the fish in that part were poisonous. Several of our people took the alarm, and abstained; the rule I made use of in choosing mine, was to take ail those that were likest the fish of our own northern seas, nor had I ever any reason to complain.
At noon, I made an observation of the sun, just under the Cape of the Arabian shore, with a Hadley's quadrant, and found it to be in lat. 12° 38' 30", but by many passages of the stars, observed by my large astronomical quadrant in the island of Perim, all deductions made, I found the true latitude of the Cape should be rather 12° 39' 20" north.
Perim is a low island, its harbour good, fronting the Abyssinian shore. It is a barren, bare rock, producing, on some parts of it, plants of absynthium, or rue, in others kelp, that did not seem to thrive; it was at this time perfectly scorched by the heat of the sun, and had only a very faint appearance of having ever vegetated. The island itself is about five miles in length, perhaps more, and about two miles in breadth. It becomes narrower at both ends. Ever since we anchored at the Cape, it had begun to blow strongly from the west, which gave our Rais great apprehension, as, he said, the wind sometimes continued in that point for fifteen days together. This alarmed me not a little, least, by missing Mahomet Gibberti, we should lose our voyage. We had rice and butter, honey and flour.
