Page:A voyage to New Holland - Dampier.djvu/140

Two days before I made the Cape of Good Hope my variation was 7 degrees 58 minutes west. I was then in 43 degrees 27 minutes east longitude from Cape Salvador, being in latitude 35 degrees 30 minutes, this was the first of June. The second of June I saw a large black fowl, with a whitish flat bill, fly by us; and took great notice of it, because in the East India Waggoner, pilot-book, there is mention made of large fowls, as big as ravens, with white flat bills and black feathers, that fly not above 30 leagues from the Cape, and are looked on as a sign of one's being near it. My reckoning made me then think myself above 90 leagues from the Cape, according to the longitude which the Cape hath in the common sea-charts: so that I was in some doubt whether these were the right fowls spoken of in the Waggoner; or whether those fowls might not fly farther off shore than is there mentioned; or whether, as it proved, I might not be nearer the Cape than I reckoned myself to be; for I found, soon after, that I was not then above 25 or 30 leagues at most from the Cape. Whether the fault were in the charts laying down the Cape too much to the east from Brazil, or were rather in our reckoning, I could not tell: but our reckonings are liable to such uncertainties from steerage, log, currents, half-