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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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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