On the eleventh they saw a large piece of the mast of a ship afloat.

On the fourteenth they saw a "tropic-bird," which the sailors thought was never seen more than twenty-five leagues from land; but it must be remembered, that, outside of the Mediterranean, few of the sailors had ever been farther themselves.

On the sixteenth they began to meet "large patches of weeds, very green, which appeared to have been recently washed away from land." This was their first knowledge of the "Sargasso sea," a curious tract in mid-Atlantic which is always green with floating seaweeds.

"The continent we shall find farther on," wrote the confident Admiral.
An observation of the sun on the seventeenth proved what had been suspected before, that the needles of the compasses were not pointing precisely to the north.

The variation of the needle, since that time, has been a recognized fact.