But In Cases Of This Nature, Where The Variation Is Absolutely Irregular, And The Needle Plays Quite Round The Compass, Our Author's Conjecture May Very Well Find Place:

Yet it must be owned that it is a point far enough from being clear, that mines of loadstone affect the compass at a distance; which, however, might be very easily determined, since there are large mines of loadstone in the island of Elba, on the coast of Tuscany.

CHAPTER IV: HE DISCOVERS A NEW COUNTRY TO WHICH HE GIVES THE NAME OF VAN DIEMEN'S LAND.

On the 24th of the same month, being in the latitude of 42 degrees 25 minutes south, and in the longitude of 163 degrees 50 minutes, I discovered land, which lay east-south-east at the distance of ten miles, which I called Van Diemen's Land. The compass pointed right towards this land. The weather being bad, I steered south and by east along the coast, to the height of 44 degrees south, where the land runs away east, and afterwards north-east and by north. In the latitude of 43 degrees 10 minutes south, and in the longitude of 167 degrees 55 minutes, I anchored on the 1st of December, in a bay, which I called the Bay of Frederic Henry. I heard, or at least fancied I heard, the sound of people upon the shore; but I saw nobody. All I met with worth observing was two trees, which were two fathoms or two fathoms and a half in girth, and sixty or sixty- five feet high from the root to the branches:

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