Though The Sun Is Quite
Vertical In Passing Over This Mountain, And Extremely Hot, Yet The Thick
Fog Is Never Dissipated.
In our voyage we never lose sight of land, yet
keep always at a considerable distance, carefully observing the
Declination of the sun, and keeping a southerly course till we arrive in
_four degrees on the equinoctial_[7], when we suddenly change our course
to the south-east, keeping the Ethiopian coast always on our left hand in
our way to the island of St Thomas. On this coast, between the tropic and
the equinoctial, we never meet with any hard gales, as storms are very
rarely found within the tropics. On nearing the land, the soundings in
many parts of the coast do not exceed fifty _braccia_, but farther out
the depth rapidly increases, and the sea usually runs high at a distance
from the land. When we arrived at Rio del Oro, as mentioned before, we
observed four stars in the form of a cross, of an extraordinary size and
splendour, elevated thirty degrees above the antarctic pole, and forming
the constellation called _il Crusero_. While under the tropic of Cancer,
we saw this constellation very low; and, on directing our _balestra_[8]
to the lowermost of these stars, we found it to be directly south, and
concluded that it must be in the centre of the antarctic polar circle. We
observed the same constellation very high when we were at the island of
St Thomas; and remarked that the moon, after rain, produces a rainbow
similar to that occasioned by the sun during the day, except that the
colours were dim and ill-defined.
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