Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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PASSAGE FROM TENERIFE TO SOUTH AMERICA.
THE ISLAND OF TOBAGO.
ARRIVAL AT CUMANA.
We left the road of Santa Cruz on the 25th of June, and directed
our course towards South America. We soon lost sight of the Canary
Islands, the lofty mountains of which were covered with a reddish
vapour. The Peak alone appeared from time to time, as at intervals
the wind dispersed the clouds that enveloped the Piton. We felt,
for the first time, how strong are the impressions left on the mind
from the aspect of those countries situated on the limits of the
torrid zone, where nature appears at once so rich, so various, and
so majestic. Our stay at Teneriffe had been very short, and yet we
withdrew from the island as if it had long been our home.
Our passage from Santa Cruz to Cumana, the most eastern part of the
New Continent, was very fine. We cut the tropic of Cancer on the
27th; and though the Pizarro was not a very fast sailer, we made,
in twenty days, the nine hundred leagues, which separate the coast
of Africa from that of the New Continent. We passed fifty leagues
west of Cape Bojador, Cape Blanco, and the Cape Verd islands. A few
land birds, which had been driven to sea by the impetuosity of the
wind followed us for several days.
The latitude diminished rapidly, from the parallel of Madeira to
the tropic. When we reached the zone where the trade-winds are
constant, we crossed the ocean from east to west, on a calm sea,
which the Spanish sailors call the Ladies' Gulf, el Golfo de las
Damas. In proportion as we advanced towards the west, we found the
trade-winds fix to eastward.
These winds, the most generally adopted theory of which is
explained in a celebrated treatise of Halley,* are a phenomenon
much more complicated than most persons admit. (* The existence of
an upper current of air, which blows constantly from the equator to
the poles, and of a lower current, which blows from the poles to
the equator, had already been admitted, as M. Arago has shown, by
Hooke. The ideas of the celebrated English naturalist are developed
in a Discourse on Earthquakes published in 1686. "I think (adds he)
that several phenomena, which are presented by the atmosphere and
the ocean, especially the winds, may be explained by the polar
currents." - Hooke's Posthumous Works page 364.) In the Atlantic
Ocean, the longitude, as well as the declination of the sun,
influences the direction and limits of the trade-winds. In the
direction of the New Continent, in both hemispheres, these limits
extend beyond the tropics eight or nine degrees; while in the
vicinity of Africa, the variable winds prevail far beyond the
parallel of 28 or 27 degrees. It is to be regretted, on account of
the progress of meteorology and navigation, that the changes of the
currents of the equinoctial atmosphere in the Pacific are much less
known than the variation of these same currents in a sea that is
narrower, and influenced by the proximity of the coasts of Guinea
and Brazil.
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