Our run from Java Head to this place afforded very few subjects of remark that can be of use to future navigators; such as occurred, however, I shall set down.  We had left Java Head eleven days before we got the general south-east trade-wind, during which time we did not advance above 5 deg. to the southward, and 3 deg. to the west, having variable light airs, interrupted by calms, with sultry weather, and an unwholesome air, occasioned probably by the load of vapours which the eastern trade-wind and westerly monsoons bring into these latitudes, both which blow in these seas at the time of the year when we happened to be there.  The easterly wind prevails as far as 10 deg. or 12 deg.  S., and the westerly as far as 6 deg. or 8 deg.; in the intermediate space the winds are variable, and the air, I believe, always unwholesome; it certainly aggravated the diseases which we brought with us from Batavia, and particularly the flux, which was not in the least degree checked by any medicine, so that whoever was seized with it considered himself as a dead man; but we had no sooner got into the trade-wind, than we began to feel its salutary effects:  We buried indeed several of our people afterwards, but they were such as had been taken on board in a state so low and feeble that there was scarcely a possibility of their recovery.  At first we suspected that this dreadful disorder might have been brought upon us by the water that we took on board at Prince’s Island, or even by the turtle that we bought there; but there is not the least reason to believe that this suspicion was well-grounded, for all the ships that came from Batavia at the same season, suffered in the same degree, and some of them even more severely, though none of them touched at Prince’s Island in their way.

A few days after we left Java, we saw boobies about the ship for several nights successively, and as these birds are known to roost every night on shore, we thought them an indication that some island was not far distant; perhaps it might be the island of Selam, which, in different charts, is very differently laid down both in name and situation.

The variation of the compass off the west coast of Java, is about 3 deg.  W., and so it continued without any sensible variation, in the common track of ships, to the longitude of 288 deg.  W., latitude 22 deg.  S., after which it increased apace, so that in longitude 295 deg., latitude 23 deg., the variation was 10 deg. 20’ W.:  In seven degrees more of longitude, and one of latitude, it increased two degrees; in the same space farther to the west, it increased five degrees:  In latitude 28 deg., longitude 314 deg., it was 24 deg., 20’, in latitude 29 deg., longitude 317 deg., it was 26 deg. 10’, and was then stationary for the space of about ten degrees farther to the west; but in latitude 34 deg., longitude 333 deg., we observed it twice to be 28 deg. 1/4 W., and this was its greatest variation, for in latitude 35 deg. 1/2 longitude 337 deg., it was 24 deg., and continued gradually to decrease; so that off Cape Anguillas it was 22 deg. 30’, and in Table Bay 20 deg. 30’ W.