On The Contrary, Every Thing Conspired To
Make Me Believe There Is No Southern Continent, Between The Meridian Of
America And New Zealand; At Least, This Passage Did Not Produce Any
Indubitable Signs Of Any, As Will Appear By The Following Remarks.
After
leaving the coasts of New Zealand, we daily saw floating on the sea rock-
weed, for the space of 18 deg.
Of longitude. In my passage to New Zealand in
1769, we also saw this weed, for the space of 12 or 14 deg. of longitude before
we made the land. The weed is undoubtedly the produce of New Zealand;
because the nearer the coast, the greater quantity you see. At the greatest
distance from the coast, we saw it only in small pieces, generally more
rotten, and covered with barnacles, an indubitable sign that it had been
long at sea. Were it not for this, one might be led to conjecture that some
other large land lay in the neighbourhood; for it cannot be a small extent
of coast to produce such a quantity of weed, as to cover so large a space
of sea. It hath been already mentioned, that we were no sooner clear of the
straits, than we met with a large hollow swell from the S.E., which
continued till we arrived in the longitude of 177 deg. W., and latitude 46 deg..
There we had large billows from the N. and N.E., for five days
successively, and until we got 5 deg.
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