Endeavour journal, 23 September 1768 (Series 03.027)
| Notes: | Page header reads: 'to Brasil' |
| Author: | Banks, Joseph, Sir, 1743-1820 |
| Date: | 23 September 1768 |
| Series title: | Series 03: The Endeavour journal of Joseph Banks, 25 August 1768 - 12 July 1771 |
| Frame numbers: | |
| Transcript: | 23. This morn we were calld up very early to see the pike of Teneriffe, which now for the first time appeard at a vast distance much above the clouds (I mean those which form a bank near the Horizon); the hill itself was so faint, that no man who was not used to the appearance of land at a great distance could tell it from a cloud, it soon however appeard something clearer and a sketch was made of it. While we were engagd in looking at the hill a fish was taken which was describ'd and called Scomber serpens; the seamen said they had never seen such a one before except the first lieutenant, who rememberd to have taken one before just about these Islands; Sr Hans Sloane in his Passage out to Jamaica also took one of these fish which he gives a figure of, Vol.1, T.1, f.2. The Pike continued in sight almost all day, tho sometimes obscurd by the clouds; at sunset however its appearance was most truely elegant, the rays of the sun remaining upon it sometime after it was set and the other land quite Black, and giving it a warmth of colour not to be express'd by painting. |
