Section 2 - The first Pacific voyage of James Cook
Endeavour journal, 7 November 1768 (Series 03.073)
| Notes: |
Page header reads: 'to Brasil' |
| Author: |
Banks, Joseph, Sir, 1743-1820 |
| Date: |
7 November 1768 |
| Series title: |
Series 03: The Endeavour journal of Joseph Banks, 25 August 1768 - 12 July 1771 |
| Frame numbers: |
CY 3006 / 102
CY 3006 / 103
CY 3006 / 104 |
| Transcript: |
7. This moorn at four no ground with 100 Fathoms of Line. About noon long ranges of a yellowish colour appeard upon the sea, many of them very large, one (the largest) might be a mile in lengh and 3 or 400 yards wide. The seamen in general affirmd roundly that they were the spawn of fishes and that they had often seen the same appearance before; upon taking up some of the water so coloured we found it to be causd by innumerable small atoms, each pointed at the end and of a yellowish colour, none of them above a quarter of a line in lengh; in the microscope they appeard to be fasciculi of small fibres interwove one within the other, not unlike the nidi of some Phryganeas which we call caddices. What they were or for what purposes designd we could not even guess, nor so much as distinguish whether their substance was animal or vegetable. |
