We crossed the equinoxial with a fine fresh gale at S.E. on Friday the 28th of November, at four in the morning, being then in the longitude of 27° 59' west from London. And on the 2d of December, in the morning, we saw a sail in the N.W. quarter, and made the _Gloucester's_ and _Tryal's_ signals to chace, and half an hour after we let out our reefs and chased with the squadron; and about noon a signal was made for the _Wager_ to take our remaining victualler, the _Anna_ pink, in tow. But at seven in the evening, finding we did not near the chace, and that the _Wager_ was very far astern, we shortened sail, and made a signal for the cruizers to join the squadron. The next day but one we again discovered a sail, which on a nearer approach we judged to be the same vessel. We chased her the whole day, and though we rather gained upon her, yet night came on before we could overtake her, which obliged us to give over the chace, to collect our scattered squadron. We were much chagrined at the escape of this vessel, as we then apprehended her to be an advice-boat sent from Old Spain to Buenos Ayres with notice of our expedition. But we have since learnt that we were deceived in this conjecture, and that it was our East India Company's packet bound to St. Helena.
On the 10th of December, being by our accounts in the latitude of 20° S., and 36° 30' longitude west from London, the _Tryal_ fired a gun to denote soundings. We immediately sounded, and found sixty fathom water, the bottom coarse ground with broken shells. The _Tryal_ being ahead of us, had at one time thirty-seven fathom, which afterwards increased to ninety: and then she found no bottom, which happened to us too at our second trial, though we sounded with a hundred and fifty fathom of line. This is the shoal which is laid down in most charts by the name of the Abrollos; and it appeared { 44} we were upon the very edge of it; perhaps farther in it may be extremely dangerous. We were then, by our different accounts, from ninety to sixty leagues east of the coast of Brazil. The next day but one we spoke with a Portuguese brigantine from Rio Janeiro, bound to Bahia del todos Santos, who informed us that we were thirty-four leagues from Cape St. Thomas, and forty leagues from Cape Frio, which last bore from us W.S.W. By our accounts we were near eighty leagues from Cape Frio; and though on the information of this brigantine we altered our course and stood more to the southward, yet by our coming in with the land afterwards, we were fully convinced that our reckoning was much correcter than our Portuguese intelligence. We found a considerable current setting to the southward after we had passed the latitude of 16° S. And the same took place all along the coast of Brazil, and even to the southward of the river of Plate, it amounting sometimes to thirty miles in twenty-four hours, and once to above forty miles.