needless testimony to their non-existence, at least in the place assigned
them in the old charts.

In passing the gut of Gibraltar we remarked the current setting us into
it: this I have before noticed in outward voyages: in the homeward, one
is generally too far to the westward to feel its effects. A small
schooner sailed for England on the 20th, and most of us took the
opportunity of sending letters by her. I learnt from the master of her
that a timber ship had been recently picked up near the island, having
been dismasted in a gale off the banks of Newfoundland; she was 105 days
drifting here.

PEAK OF TENERIFE.

We were not so fortunate on this occasion as to obtain a distant sea view
of the far-famed peak of Tenerife. There are few natural objects of
greater interest when so beheld. Rising at a distance of some 40 leagues
in dim and awful solitude from the bosom of the seemingly boundless waves
that guard its base, it rests at first upon the blue outline of the
horizon like a conically shaped cloud: hour after hour as you approach
the island it seems to grow upon the sight, until at length its broad
reflection darkens the surrounding waters. I can imagine nothing better
calculated than an appearance of this kind to satisfy a beholder of the
spherical figure of the earth, and it would seem almost incredible that
early navigators should have failed to find conviction in the unvarying
testimonies of their own experience, which an approach to every shore
afforded.

In approaching the anchorage of Santa Cruz, vessels should close with the
shore, and get into soundings before--as is the general custom--arriving