7th November 1768

Off the Coast of Brazil
Moderate breezes and Clear weather. P.M. found the Variation to be 4 degrees 49 minutes East. At 6 Sounded and had 32 fathoms Water; the Bottom Coral Rocks, fine Sand and Shells, which Soundings we carried upon a South-West 1/2 West Course 9 or 10 leagues, and then had no ground with 100 fathom. We were by our account and per run afterwards 54 Leagues East from the Coast of Brazil and to the Southward of the Shoals called Abrollos, as they are laid down in Most Charts. Wind South-East to North-East; course South 58 degrees West; distance 68 miles; latitude 19 degrees 46 minutes South, longitude 36 degrees 50 minutes West.

Joseph Banks Journal
This morn at four no ground with 100 Fathoms of Line. About noon long ranges of a yellowish colour appeard upon the sea, many of them very large, one (the largest) might be a mile in lengh and 3 or 400 yards wide. The seamen in general affirmd roundly that they were the spawn of fishes and that they had often seen the same appearance before; upon taking up some of the water so coloured we found it to be causd by innumerable small atoms, each pointed at the end and of a yellowish colour, none of them above a quarter of a line in lengh; in the microscope they appeard to be fasciculi of small fibres interwove one within the other, not unlike the nidi of some Phryganeas which we call caddices. What they were or for what purposes designd we could not even guess, nor so much as distinguish whether their substance was animal or vegetable.

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