August the 24th. The wind shifted and was in our teeth. We were told by some of the crew to expect a little storm, the higher clouds being very thin and striped and scattered about the sky like parcels of combed wool, or so many skains of yarn, which they said forebode a storm. These striped clouds ran north-west and south-east, in the direction of the wind we then had. Towards night the wind abated and we had a perfect calm, which is a sign of a change of wind.
August the 25th. and 26th. A west wind sprung up and grew stronger and stronger, so that at last the waves washed our deck.
August the 27th. In the morning we got a better wind, which went through various points of the compass and brought on a storm from north-east towards night.
Our captain told me an observation founded on long experience, viz. that though the winds changed frequently in the Atlantic ocean, especially in summer time, the most frequent however was the western, and this accounts for the passage from America to Europe commonly being shorter, [[7]]than that from Europe to America. Besides this, the winds in the Atlantic during summer are frequently partial, so that a storm may rage on one part of it, and within a few miles of the place little or no storm at all may be felt. In winter the winds are more constant, extensive and violent; so that then the same wind reigns on the greater part of the ocean for a good while, and causes greater waves than in summer.
August the 30th. As I had observed the night before some strong flashes of lightening without any subsequent clap of thunder, I enquired of our captain, whether he could assign any reasons for it. He told me these phœnomena were pretty common, and the consequence of a preceding heat in the atmosphere; but that when lightenings were observed in winter, prudent navigators were used to reef their sails, as they are by this sign certain of an impendent storm; and so likewise in that season, a cloud rising from the north-west, is an infallible forerunner of a great tempest.
September the 7th. As we had the first day of the month contrary wind, on the second it shifted to the north, was again contrary the third, and fair the fourth and following days. The fifth we were in forty deg. [[8]]three min. north lat. and between fifty-three and fifty-four deg. west long. from London.
Besides the common waves rolling with the wind, we met on the 4th. and 5th. inst. with waves coming from south-west, which the captain gave as a mark of a former storm from that quarter in this neighbourhood.
September the 8th. We crossed by a moderate wind, a sea with the highest waves we met on the whole passage, attributed by the captain to the division between the great ocean and the inner American gulf; and soon after we met with waves greatly inferior to those we observed before.
September the 9th. In the afternoon we remarked that in some places the colour of the sea (which had been hitherto of a deep blue) was changed into a paler hue; some of these spots were narrow stripes of twelve or fourteen fathoms breadth, of a pale green colour, which is supposed to be caused by the sand, or as some say, by the weeds under water.
September the 12th. We were becalmed that day, and as we in this situation observed a ship, which we suspected to be a Spanish privateer, our fear was very great; but we saw some days after our arrival at [[9]]Philadelphia the same ship arrive, and heard that they seeing us had been under the same apprehensions with ourselves.