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4 Letters written during the late Voyage of Discovery LETTER II. At sea, Wednesday, My dkar Brothkr, 26th May, 1819. You received, I hope, my long epistle of the 11th, which, by good fortune, was sent on shore from Yarmouth roads, by a boat be longing to H. M.’s ship Wye, on Saturday the 15th. Since then we have lost sight of every part and appendage of the British isles; and I now write to you from the great Atlantic ocean, from a spot due south from the centre of Iceland, and due west from the centre of Scotland. If you will turn up your Atlas to such a position at the intersection of the meridian of 20° 45' west from Greenwich, and the parallel of 57° 3' North Latitude, you will then be able to give my mother and Mary some idea of the spot where, in imagination, I am as busy in conversing with you all as if I were seated beside you. My last letter closed at the commencement of our voyage, since which we have been constantly under weigh, with the exception of short interruptions on the coast of Norfolk, in Yarmouth roads. The narrow passages between the sand banks and the land, and between one another, afford the only shelter for shipping in easterly winds to be found on the English coast of the German ocean. For that reason these passes are much resorted to; but for the same reason shipwrecks are there by no means rare. The Yarmouth boatmen are however of great service to the people on board, by their courage and skill in rescuing them from the wrecks. Just such an account as this you have heard me give of the advantages and dangers of the Godwin Sands and the Downs, and of the boatmen of Deal. Before we arrived off Yarmouth we discovered that the Griper was in general no match for the Hecla in sailing, excepting on a wind ; it became necessary, therefore, on several occasions, for the Hecla either to take her in tow, or to lie to, to wait for her getting up. The voyage properly began at noon on Tuesday the 11th, when we left the river, and commenced our experiments and observations on the state of the weather and on the temperature of the air and the sea. On that day the thermometer in the shade stood at sixty-two degrees; the temperature of the surface of the sea was 57 degrees, and the barometer was at 30'19 inches. Early on the morning of Friday the i4tb, while turning up to the north ward, the wind being contrary and the sea rough, the Hecla touched on the east end of Sheringham shoal, occasioned by the