Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 1 (Stockdale).djvu/88

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78
VOYAGE IN SEARCH
[1791.

what we frequently experience in the warm ſummer weather of Europe; the heat threw us into a moſt profuſe perſpiration, which gave riſe to very troubleſome efferveſcences of the blood.

Between the tropics, the mercury in the barometer ſtands at a very uniform height. We never obſerved it to vary more than an inch and a half, more or leſs. It generally ſtood at 28 inches 2 lines, although the atmoſphere was often agitated by violent ſtorms, which being generated in the interior of Africa, from the coaſt of which we were not more than about 360,000 toiſes diſtant, were brought over to us by winds from N.E. and E.N.E.

12th. We here caught the fiſh known among the ichthyologiſts by the name of balliſtes verrucoſus. A great number of a ſmall ſpecies of whales (ſouffleurs) ſwam about our ſhips, followed in their tardy courſe by ſharks which fed upon their excrements.

A ſquall from the S.E. gave us intimation of the gales from the ſame quarter, that prevailed in the diſtant regions under the equator; though they blow there generally from the N.E. during this ſeaſon, when the ſun remains almoſt two months within the Tropic of Capricorn.

14th. A ſhark that had been preceded by a number of the fiſhes called pilots (gaſteroſteus ductor,

Linn.)