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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Meanwhile It Was Curious To Observe The Effect Of Several
Black, Isolated, And Very Low Clouds, Which Passed The Zenith.
We
felt the force of the wind augment or diminish progressively,
according as small bodies of vesicular vapour approached or
receded, while the electrometers, furnished with a long metallic
rod and lighted match, showed no change of electric tension in the
lower strata of the air.
It is by help of these squalls, which
alternate with dead calms, that the passage from the Canary Islands
to the Antilles, or southern coast of America, is made in the
months of June and July.
Some Spanish navigators have lately proposed going to the West
Indies and the coasts of Terra Firma by a course different from
that which was taken by Columbus. They advise, instead of steering
directly to the south in search of the trade-winds, to change both
latitude and longitude, in a diagonal line from Cape St. Vincent to
America. This method, which shortens the way, cutting the tropic
nearly twenty degrees west of the point where it is commonly cut by
pilots, was several times successfully adopted by Admiral Gravina.
That able commander, who fell at the battle of Trafalgar, arrived
in 1802 at St. Domingo, by the oblique passage, several days before
the French fleet, though orders of the court of Madrid would have
forced him to enter Ferrol with his squadron, and stop there some
time.
This new system of navigation shortens the passage from Cadiz to
Cumana one-twentieth; but as the tropic is attained only at the
longitude of forty degrees, the chance of meeting with contrary
winds, which blow sometimes from the south, and at other times from
the south-west, is more unfavourable.
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