August the 8th. At three o’clock we tided down the channel, passed Dover, and saw plainly the opinion of the celebrated Camden in his Britannia confirmed, that [[3]]here England had been formerly joined to France and Flanders by an isthmus. Both shores form here two opposite points; and both are formed of the same chalk hills, which have the same configuration, so that a person acquainted with the English coasts and approaching those of Picardy afterwards, without knowing them to be such, would certainly take them to be the English ones.[1]
August the 9th–12th. We tided and alternately sailed down the channel, and passed Dungness, Fairlight, the Isle of Wight, Portsmouth, the Peninsula of Portland and Bolthead, a point behind which Plymouth lies; during all which time we had very little wind.
August the 13th. Towards night we got out of the English channel into the Bay of Biscay.
August the 14th. We had contrary wind, and this increased the rolling of the ship, for it is generally remarked that the Bay of Biscay has the greatest and broadest waves, which are of equal size with those between America and Europe; they are commonly half an English mile in length, and have a height proportionable to it. The Baltic [[4]]and the German ocean has on the contrary short and broken waves.
Whenever an animal is killed on board the ship, the sailors commonly hang some fresh pieces of meat for a while into the sea, and it is said, it then keeps better.
August the 15th. The same swell of the sea still continued, but the waves began to smooth, and a foam swimming on them was said to forebode in calm weather, a continuance of the same for some days.
About noon a north easterly breeze sprung up, and in the afternoon it blew more, and this gave us a fine spectacle; for the great waves rolled the water in great sheets, in one direction, and the north easterly wind curled the surface of these waves quite in another. By the beating and dashing of the waves against one another, with a more than ordinary violence, we could see that we passed a current, whose direction the captain could not determine.
August the 16th–21st. The same favourable breeze continued to our great comfort and amazement, for the captain observed that it was very uncommon to meet with an easterly or north-easterly wind between Europe and the Azores (which the sailors call the Western Islands) for more than two days together; for the more common [[5]]wind is here a westerly one: but beyond the Azores they find a great variety of winds, especially about this time of the year; nor do the westerly winds continue long beyond these isles; and to this it is owing, that when navigators have passed the Azores, they think they have performed one half of the voyage, although in reality it be but one third part. These isles come seldom in sight; for the navigators keep off them, on account of the dangerous rocks under water surrounding them. Upon observation and comparison of the journal, we found that we were in forty-three deg. twenty-four min. north lat. and thirty and a half degrees west long. from London.
August the 22d. About noon the captain assured us, that in twenty-four hours we should have a south-west wind: and upon my enquiring into the reasons of his foretelling this with certainty, he pointed at some clouds in the south-west, whose points turned towards north-east, and said they were occasioned by a wind from the opposite quarter. At this time I was told we were about half way to Pensylvania.
August the 23d. About seven o’clock in the morning the expected south-west wind sprung up, and soon accelerated our [[6]]course so much, that we went at the rate of eight knots an hour.