floating from the north. Treatise on Husbandry and Gardening, Vol. II.
p. 437. And adds, that Mr. Barham about the year 1718, in his voyage
from Jamaica to England in the beginning of June, met with ice-islands
coming from the north, which were surrounded with so great a fog that
the ship was in danger of striking upon them, and that one of them
measured fifty miles in length.

We have lately experienced an instance of ice-islands brought from the
Southern polar regions, on which the Guardian struck at the beginning of
her passage from the Cape of Good Hope towards Botany Bay, on December
22, 1789. These islands were involved in mist, were about one hundred
and fifty fathoms long, and about fifty fathoms above the surface of the
water. A part from the top of one of them broke off and fell into the
sea, causing an extraordinary commotion in the water and a thick smoke
all round it.]

[_Threefold train_. l. 539. The river Niger after traversing an immense
tract of populous country is supposed to divide itself into three other
great rivers. The Rio Grande, the Gambia, and the Senegal. Gold-dust is
obtained from the sands of these rivers.]

[_Wide wastes of sand_. l. 547. When the sun is in the Southern tropic
36 deg. distant from the zenith, the thermometer is seldom lower than 72
deg. at Gondar in Abyssinia, but it falls to 60 or 53 deg. when the sun
is immediately vertical; so much does the approach of rain counteract
the heat of the sun. Bruce's Travels, Vol. 3. p. 670.]


XII. Should SOLSTICE, stalking through the sickening bowers,
550 Suck the warm dew-drops, lap the falling showers;