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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When The Sea Is
Perfectly Calm, There Appears At The Surface Narrow Stripes, Like
Small Rivulets, In Which The Waters Run With A Murmur Very Sensible
To The Ear Of An Experienced Pilot.
On the 13th of June, in 34
degrees 36 minutes north latitude, we found ourselves in the midst
of a great number of these beds of currents.
We took their
direction with the compass, and some ran north-east, others
east-north-east, though the general movement of the ocean,
indicated by comparing the reckoning with the chronometrical
longitude, continued to be south-east. It is very common to see a
mass of motionless waters crossed by threads of water, which run in
different directions, and we may daily observe this phenomenon on
the surface of lakes; but it is much less frequent to find partial
movements, impressed by local causes on small portions of waters in
the midst of an oceanic river, which occupies an immense space, and
which moves, though slowly, in a constant direction. In the
conflict of currents, as in the oscillation of the waves, our
imagination is struck by those movements which seem to penetrate
each other, and by which the ocean is continually agitated.
We passed Cape St. Vincent, which is of basaltic formation, at the
distance of more than eighty leagues. It is not distinctly seen at
a greater distance than 15 leagues, but the granitic mountain
called the Foya de Monchique, situated near the Cape, is
perceptible, as pilots allege, at the distance of 26 leagues. If
this assertion be exact, the Foya is 700 toises (1363 metres), and
consequently 116 toises (225 metres) higher than Vesuvius.
From Corunna to the 36th degree of latitude we had scarcely seen
any organic being, excepting sea-swallows and a few dolphins. We
looked in vain for sea-weeds (fuci) and mollusca, when on the 11th
of June we were struck with a curious sight which afterwards was
frequently renewed in the southern ocean. We entered on a zone
where the whole sea was covered with a prodigious quantity of
medusas. The vessel was almost becalmed, but the mollusca were
borne towards the south-east, with a rapidity four times greater
than the current. Their passage lasted near three quarters of an
hour. We then perceived but a few scattered individuals, following
the crowd at a distance as if tired with their journey. Do these
animals come from the bottom of the sea, which is perhaps in these
latitudes some thousand fathoms deep? or do they make distant
voyages in shoals? We know that the mollusca haunt banks; and if
the eight rocks, near the surface, which captain Vobonne mentions
having seen in 1732, to the north of Porto Santo, really exist, we
may suppose that this innumerable quantity of medusas had been
thence detached; for we were but 28 leagues from the reef. We
found, beside the Medusa aurita of Baster, and the Medusa pelagica
of Bosc with eight tentacula (Pelagia denticulata, Peron), a third
species which resembles the Medusa hysocella, and which Vandelli
found at the mouth of the Tagus.
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