Deep sea soundings.

We continued steering East and by North 1/2 North, and at sunset, 14 miles from our noon position, the water had deepened to 145 fathoms, bottom a fine white sand and powdered shells.  Before we were 50 miles from our noon position, we could find no bottom with 200 fathoms.

January 12.

We made but slow progress during the night, and felt delay the more tedious from the eager anxiety with which we desired sight of the land where our duties were to begin in earnest.  We were not successful with our soundings till 6 P.M., when we had the same kind of bottom as before described, with 117 fathoms:  15 miles East by North 1/2 North from our noon position, which was 220 miles West by South from Roebuck Bay:  30 miles in the same direction from our noon position, we shoaled our water to 85 fathoms, the ground retaining the same distinctive character.  We had the wind from South-West to South-East during the afternoon, but at 6 P.M. it chopped round to North-North-West, when, too, for the first time, we perceived lightning to the South-East—­Barometer 29.92; thermometer 85.

January 13.

The preceding indications of the coming squall, which had given us full time for preparation, were realized about one o’clock this morning, when it reached us, though only moderately, from South-East.  It was preceded by the rise and rapid advance of a black cloud in that quarter, just as Captain King has described.

Atmospheric temperature.

At noon we were in latitude 18 degrees 26 minutes South, longitude 119 degrees 18 minutes East, and in soundings of 75 fathoms, fine white sand, broken shells, and fragments of dead coral.  There was only a slight variation in the atmospheric temperature of two degrees during the twenty-four hours, the highest in the day being 85, and the lowest at night 83.  The water was very smooth, but as night approached it thundered and lightened heavily and vividly, and most of us noticed and suffered from a particularly oppressive and overpowering state of the atmosphere, which the heat indicated by the thermometer was by no means sufficiently intense to account for.

January 14.

During the last twenty-four hours we had made but 51 miles progress in the direction of Roebuck Bay; our noon observations placed us in latitude 18 degrees 25 minutes South, longitude 120 degrees 13 minutes East, being about 80 miles from the nearest land.  We obtained soundings at 72 fathoms, yellow sand and broken shells.  During the afternoon, it being nearly a calm, we found ourselves surrounded by quantities of fish, about the size of the mackerel, and apparently in pursuit of a number of small and almost transparent members of the finny tribe, not larger than the minnow.

We sounded at sunset, and found bottom at 52 fathoms, which shoaled by half-past ten to 39.  The circumstance, however, occasioned no surprise, as we had run South-South-East 25 miles, in a direct line for that low portion of the coast from which the flat we were running over extends.