. But,
finding in this voyage that the difference of variation did not bear a
regular proportion to the difference of longitude, I was much pleased to
see it thus observed in a scheme shown me after my return home, wherein
are represented the several variations in the Atlantic Sea, on both sides
of the equator, and there the line of no variation in that sea is not a
meridian line, but goes very oblique, as do those also which show the
increase of variation on each side of it. In that chart there is so large
an advance made as well towards the accounting for those seemingly
irregular increases and decreases of variation towards the south-east
coast of America as towards the fixing a general scheme or system of the
variation everywhere, which would be of such great use in navigation,
that I cannot but hope that the ingenious author, Captain Halley, who to
his profound skill in all theories of these kinds, hath added and is
adding continually personal experiments, will e'er long oblige the world
with a fuller discovery of the course of the variation, which hath
hitherto been a secret. For my part I profess myself unqualified for
offering at anything of a general scheme; but since matter of fact, and
whatever increases the history of the variation, may be of use towards
the settling or confirming the theory of it, I shall here once for all
insert a table of all the variations I observed beyond the equator in
this voyage, both in going out and returning back; and what errors there
may be in it I shall leave to be corrected by the observations of others.

(A TABLE OF VARIATIONS.)

OCCURRENCES NEAR THE CAPE; AND THE AUTHOR'S PASSING BY IT.

But to return from this digression: having fair weather and the winds
hanging southerly I jogged on to the eastward to make the Cape. On the
third of June we saw a sail to leeward of us, showing English colours. I
bore away to speak with her, and found her to be the Antelope of London,
commanded by Captain Hammond, and bound for the Bay of Bengal in the
service of the New-East-India Company. There were many passengers aboard,
going to settle there under Sir Edward Littleton, who was going chief
thither: I went aboard and was known by Sir Edward and Mr. Hedges, and
kindly received and treated by them and the commander; who had been
afraid of us before, though I had sent one of my officers aboard. They
had been in at the Cape, and came from thence the day before, having
stocked themselves w