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LIFE A N D VOYAGES OF
[BOOK
X.
out the elements, and the climate was mild and genial whether in summer or winter. On taking his astronomical observations at night, after crossing that imaginary line, the north star appeared to him to describe a diurnal circle in the heavens, of five degrees in diameter. On his present voyage he had varied his route, and had run southward from the Cape de Verde Islands for the equinoctial line. Before reaching it, however, the heat had become insup足 portable, and, a wind springing up from the east, he had been induced to strike westward, when in the parallel of Sierra Leone in Guinea. For several days he had been almost consumed by scorching and stifling heat under a sultry yet clouded sky, and in a drizzling atmosphere, until he arrived at the ideal line already mentioned, extending from north to south. Here suddenly, to his great relief, he had emerged into serene weather, with a clear blue sky and a sweet and temperate atmosphere. The farther he had proceeded west, the more pure and genial he had found the climate ; the sea tranquil, the breezes soft and balmy. All these phenomena coincided with those he had remarked at the same line, though farther north, in his former voyages ; excepting that here there was no herbage in the sea, and the movements of stars were different. The polar star appeared to him here to describe a diurnal circle of ten degrees instead of five ; an aug足 mentation which struck him with astonishment, but which he says he ascertained by observations taken in different nights, with his quadrant. Its greatest altitude at the former place, in the parallel of the Azores, he had found to be ten degrees, and in the present place fifteen. From these and other circumstances, he was inclined to doubt the received theory with respect to the form of the earth. Phi-