It Might Be An Hour Before Sunset When We Came To Anchor.

This day my pilot took the sun at noon, and found our latitude scarce 19 deg. N[289].

The shoals of Swakem are so many and so intermingled, that no picture or information were sufficient to understand them, much less to sail through among them; the islands, shoals, banks, rocks, and channels are so numerous and intricate. At the entrance among these shoals, there is to seaward a shoal under water on which the sea breaks very much, and to landward a small island, these two ranging N.E. and S.W. a quarter more E. and W. the distance between being three quarters of a league. Immediately on entering, the channel seemed large and spacious, and the farther we advanced so much more to seaward there appeared to us an infinite number of very flat islands, shoals, sand-banks and rocks, that they could not be reckoned. Towards the land side these were not so numerous; but it is the foulest and most unnavigable channel that ever was seen, in comparison with any other sea. What ought chiefly to be attended to in this channel, is always to keep nearer to the shoals that are to seawards, and as far as possible from those to landward. The breadth of this channel in some places is about half a league, in others a quarter, and in others less than a gun-shot. In the entry to this channel we had six fathoms, and from thence to the port of Shabak never less, and never more than 12.

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