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Of this essential article we were never at an allowance, but had always plenty for every necessary purpose. Navigators in general cannot, indeed, expect, nor would they wish to meet with such advantages in this respect, as fell to my lot. The nature of our voyage carried us into very high latitudes.
A common practice of navigators, adopted by Columbus, was to steer first north or south along the coast and then due west on the parallel thought to lead to the destination sought.
To the place where this transaction took place, the navigators gave the name of Cabo do Resgati, or Cape Ransom; where likewise Fernam Tavares, an aged nobleman, received the honour of knighthood, a distinction he had long been entitled to, but which he would only receive upon the newly discovered coast.
After escaping from the violent storms encountered in doubling the Cape of Good Hope, the Rurik cast anchor on the 3rd August, 1818, in the Neva, opposite Count Romantzoff's palace. These three years of absence had been turned to good account by the hardy navigators.
At length the experienced navigators discerned celestial phenomena, which caused them to watch the heavens with greater solicitude. Piles of massive clouds, fleecy, and of a reddish hue, were observed in the morning, in the south-eastern quarter of the heavens, and the crests of the mountains, cloudless and yet of an azure cast, seemed nearer the ship than they were wont.
The Rumor Committee, otherwise known as the "Scuttle-butt Navigators," to which every man on board was elected a life member the moment he promulgated a rumor, was soon actively engaged, and it was definitely settled that the "Yankee" was to become the flagship of the whole fleet, our captain made Lord High Admiral, and the whole Spanish nation swept off the face of the globe, in about thirteen and a half seconds by the chronometer.
Hence it was termed by the geographers of old, Aprositus, or the Inaccessible; while modern navigators have called its very existence in question, pronouncing it a mere optical illusion, like the Fata Morgana of the Straits of Messina; or classing it with those unsubstantial regions known to mariners as Cape Flyaway, and the Coast of Cloud Land.
Of the mates and boatswain little need be said; they were tolerable seamen, but the first two were but poor navigators, and the boatswain could not take an observation or work a day's work, being unable to read or write, though he was the best seaman of the three.
"Oh, no, I don't think you need be frightened of anything of that sort," said Lennard, who had considerably brightened up as Auriole entered the room; "perhaps I may have been going a little too long without sleep; but, you see, a man who has the great luck to discover a new comet is something like one of the old navigators who discovered new islands and continents.
This is so large an island, that if you were to divide the whole of Europe into ten parts, New Holland is as large as nine of them: and hence, from its great extent, some geographers have dignified it with the title of a continent. The northern and western coasts of this vast island were discovered by a succession of Dutch navigators, who gave them the name of New Holland.
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