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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Without Derogating From The
Respect I Entertain For The Opinion Of That Celebrated Navigator, I
May Be Permitted To Consider This Important Object In A Far More
General Point Of View.
When we cast our eyes over the Atlantic, or that deep valley which
divides the western coasts of Europe and Africa from the eastern
coasts of the new world, we distinguish a contrary direction in the
motion of the waters.
Within the tropics, especially from the coast
of Senegal to the Caribbean Sea, the general current, that which
was earliest known to mariners, flows constantly from east to west.
This is called the equinoctial current. Its mean rapidity,
corresponding to different latitudes, is nearly the same in the
Atlantic and in the Pacific, and may be estimated at nine or ten
miles in twenty-four hours, consequently from 0.59 to 0.65 of a
foot every second! In those latitudes the waters run towards the
west with a velocity equal to a fourth of the rapidity of the
greater part of the larger rivers of Europe. The movement of the
ocean in a direction contrary to that of the rotation of the globe,
is probably connected with this last phenomenon only as far as the
rotation converts into trade winds* (* The limits of the trade
winds were, for the first time, determined by Dampier in 1666.) the
polar winds, which, in the low regions of the atmosphere bring back
the cold air of the high latitudes toward the equator.
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