This morning it was very warm and continued during the day, there being almost no wind. By noon we had run 121 miles and were now as far east as the most easternmost point of the island of Socotra, but about 100 miles to the south of it. We were now about to cross the Indian ocean to Ceylon and should be out of sight of land on the open sea for many days...
..This evening the sunset was the finest I had seen since I left England or for a long time before. Numerous clouds of the well known characters composed of rounded masses heaped over one another, floated in the sky in all directions, but more particularly appeared accumulated all round the lower part of the firmament , in a stratum with long level base at no great distance above the horizon. Beyond and obscurely seen below this, similar clouds occupied the space between these and the horizons. Much higher in the atmosphere another class of clouds floated in smaller number, these light and fleecy, - the curse of the meteorologist. As the sun sunk behind the clouds his disk became only partially visible, a brilliant crimson spot, surrounded by light of the same colour and scarcely less bright reflected from the edges of the clouds in the extreme west, and visible through the spaces left between the clouds which occupied the firmament between these and the observer...
...The fiddlers this evening played at the bows of the vessel for the benefit of the sailors who are generally granted that privilege on Saturday evenings. They danced sailor dances two of them being decked out in female costume; songs also diversified the entertainment and on the whole they conducted themselves with so much decorum as their superiors of the preceding evening; or rather considering the difference of their circumstances, with greater.
The full journal will soon be published by Annet House Museum, Linlithgow. Waldie's journey to India forms a key feature of the museum's Waldie exhibition.
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