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The land-wind, which blew during the morning, tried their patience; but the sea-breeze at length setting in, they rapidly approached the shore, which appeared thickly wooded down to the very edge of the water, with high ground rising at a short distance from it.
The land-wind, delicately scented with odors of spring, rushed to him, touched his blood, and startled from long-closed cells of memory the shades of all that he had once abandoned and striven to forget. He saw the faces of his dead: he knew their voices over the graves of the years.
I shall only add on this subject that the land-wind on Sumatra is cold, chilly, and damp; an exposure to it is therefore dangerous to the health, and sleeping in it almost certain death. The soil of the western side of Sumatra may be spoken of generally as a stiff, reddish clay, covered with a stratum or layer of black mould, of no considerable depth.
The hot sun struck down on our heads, and tanned and scorched our cheeks, and the upper works of the boat cracked with the heat, till a beefsteak might have been broiled on the gunwale. At last the land-wind died away; there was again a dead calm, in which we roasted still faster, till the sea-breeze set in and somewhat cooled our parched tongues.
It was dark when we made our approach to the mouth of the Sherbro, and when we were off it we furled everything, and let the vessel go where she might, in the hopes that should there be a slaver inside ready to sail she might take the opportunity of running out while the land-wind lasted, and, not seeing us, might fall into our clutches.
Thus, if the coast be conceived to run north and south, the same influence, or combination of influences, which produces a sea-wind at north-west produces a land-wind at north-east; or adapting the case to Sumatra, which lies north-west and south-east, a sea-wind at south is preceded or followed by a land-wind at east.
At two the next morning we weighed with the land-wind at south, and stood out clear of the shoal; but before noon were obliged to come-to again in twenty-eight fathom, near a small island among those that are called the Thousand Islands, which we did not find laid down in any chart. Pulo Pare at this time bore E.N.E. distance between six and seven miles.
At 5 the next morning we weighed again, and the Dutch ship stood away between the island Cambusses and the main; but I could not follow because we had a land-wind. Wherefore I went without the Cambusses, and by noon we saw the ships that lay at the careening island near Batavia. After the land-wind was spent, which we had at south-east and south-south-east, the seabreeze came up at east.
The ground was unpleasantly pitted and holed; the camels were weak with semi-starvation and the depressing south-wester; Lieutenant Amir put his dromedary to speed, resulting in a nose-flattening fall; and the Sayyid nearly followed suit. This is our second day of Khamsin; yet on the northern slope of the great Fiumara we meet the cool land-wind.
The land-wind, sweeping down from the hill-side, moaned through the trees; the rising moon shed her sickly and distorting light upon the bushes around; and bruised and stiff, hungry, thirsty, and uncomfortable, I felt by no means delighted with my quarters. A fire would have been agreeable, but there were no means of procuring one.
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