re zealously to those methods of
preserving the health of seamen, which he afterwards pursued with such
remarkable success." These methods will be amply detailed
hereafter.--E.]

Our run from Java Head to this place afforded very few subjects of
remark that can be of use to future navigators; such as occurred,
however, I shall set down. We had left Java Head eleven days before we
got the general south-east trade-wind, during which time we did not
advance above 5 deg. to the southward, and 3 deg. to the west, having variable
light airs, interrupted by calms, with sultry weather, and an
unwholesome air, occasioned probably by the load of vapours which the
eastern trade-wind and westerly monsoons bring into these latitudes,
both which blow in these seas at the time of the year when we happened
to be there. The easterly wind prevails as far as 10 deg. or 12 deg. S., and the
westerly as far as 6 deg. or 8 deg.; in the intermediate space the winds are
variable, and the air, I believe, always unwholesome; it certainly
aggravated the diseases which we brought with us from Batavia, and
particularly the flux, which was not in the least degree checked by any
medicine, so that whoever was seized with it considered himself as a
dead man; but we had no sooner got into the trade-wind, than we began to
feel its salutary effects: We buried indeed several of our people
afterwards, but they were such as had been taken on board in a state so
low and feeble that there was scarcely a possibility of their recovery.
At first we suspected that this dreadful disorder might have been
brought upon us by the water that we took on board at Prince's Island,
or even by the turtle that we bought there; but there is not the least
reason to believe that this suspicion was well-grounded, for all the
ships that came from Batavia at the same season, suffered in the same
degree, and some of them even more severely, though none of them touched
at Prince's Island in their way.

A few days after we left Java, we saw boobies about the ship for several
nights successively, and as these birds are known to roost every night
on shore, we thought them an indication that some island was not far
distant; perhaps it might be the island of Selam, which, in different
charts, is very differently laid down both in name and situation.

The variation of the compass off the west coast of Java, is about 3 deg. W.,
and so it continued without any sensible variation, in the com