sted along shore to about seven or eight leagues
distance, and at twelve o'clock at night we sounded, and had but twenty
fathom, hard sand. By this I found I was upon another shoal, and so
presently steered off west half an hour, and had then forty fathom. At
one in the morning of the 18th day we had eighty-five fathom; by two we
could find no ground, and then I ventured to steer along shore again due
north, which is two points wide of the coast (that lies
north-north-east), for fear of another shoal. I would not be too far off
from the land, being desirous to search into it wherever I should find an
opening or any convenience of searching about for water, etc. When we
were off the shoal-point I mentioned, where we had but twenty fathom
water, we had in the night abundance of whales about the ship, some
ahead, others astern, and some on each side, blowing and making a very
dismal noise; but when we came out again into deeper water, they left us;
indeed, the noise that they made by blowing and dashing of the sea with
their tails, making it all of a breach and foam, was very dreadful to us,
like the breach of the waves in very shoal water or among rocks. The
shoal these whales were upon had depth of water sufficient, no less than
twenty fathom, as I said, and it lies in latitude 22 degrees 22 minutes.
The shore was generally bold all along. We had met with no shoal at sea
since the Abrohlo shoal, when we first fell on the New Holland coast in
the latitude of 28 degrees, till yesterday in the afternoon and this
night. This morning also, when we expected by the draught we had with us
to have been eleven leagues off shore, we were but four, so that either
our draughts were faulty, which yet hitherto and afterwards we found true
enough as to the lying of the coast, or else here was a tide unknown to
us that deceived us, though we had found very little of any tide on this
coast hitherto; as to our winds in the coasting thus far, as we had been
within the verge of the general trade (though interrupted by the storm I
mentioned), from the latitude of 28 degrees, when we first fell in with
the coast, and by that time we were in the latitude of 25 degrees, we had
usually the regular trade wind (which is here south-south-east) when we
were at any distance from shore; but we had often sea and land breezes,
especially when near shore and when in Shark's Bay, and had a particular
north-west wind or storm that set us in thither. On