16th December 1835

Captain Fitzroy’s Journal
On the 16th of December indications of a westerly wind appeared; and for the next three days we were buffeted by a hard gale from south-west to south-east. This was the more annoying on account of the chronometer measurement, because it was accompanied by a sudden change of temperature, which I thought would alter their rates. During the twenty-four hours previous to this southerly gale commencing, we found the current setting northward, about a mile an hour; but after the hardest part of the gale was over, it set to the south-west, at about the same rate.

Both before and during these three days, I was struck by the precise similarity of the clouds, sky, peculiarities of wind, and weather, to what we had been accustomed to meet with off the coast of Patagonia: and I may here remark that, throughout the southern hemisphere, the weather, and the turn or succession of winds, as well as their nature and prognostications, are remarkably uniform.

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