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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What A Contrast Between The
Tempestuous Seas Of The Northern Latitudes And The Regions Where
The Tranquillity Of Nature Is Never Disturbed!
If the return from
Mexico or South America to the coasts of Spain were as expeditious
and as agreeable as the passage from the old to the new continent,
the number of Europeans settled in the colonies would be much less
considerable than it is at present.
To the sea which surrounds the
Azores and the Bermuda Islands, and which is traversed in returning
to Europe by the high latitudes, the Spaniards have given the
singular name of Golfo de las Yeguas (the Mares' Gulf). Colonists
who are not accustomed to the sea, and who have led solitary lives
in the forests of Guiana, the savannahs of the Caracas, or the
Cordilleras of Peru, dread the vicinity of the Bermudas more than
the inhabitants of Lima fear at present the passage round Cape
horn.
To the north of the Cape Verd Islands we met with great masses of
floating seaweeds. They were the tropic grape, (Fucus natans),
which grows on submarine rocks, only from the equator to the
fortieth degree of north and south latitude. These weeds seem to
indicate the existence of currents in this place, as well as to
south-west of the banks of Newfoundland. We must not confound the
latitudes abounding in scattered weeds with those banks of marine
plants, which Columbus compares to extensive meadows, the sight of
which dismayed the crew of the Santa Maria in the forty-second
degree of longitude. I am convinced, from the comparison of a great
number of journals, that in the basin of the Northern Atlantic
there exist two banks of weeds very different from each other. The
most extensive is a little west of the meridian of Fayal, one of
the Azores, between the twenty-fifth and thirty-sixth degrees of
latitude.* (* It would appear that Phoenician vessels came "in
thirty days' sail, with an easterly wind," to the weedy sea, which
the Portuguese and Spaniards call mar de zargasso. I have shown, in
another place (Views of Nature Bohn's edition page 46), that the
passage of Aristotle, De Mirabil. (ed. Duval page 1157), can
scarcely be applied to the coasts of Africa, like an analogous
passage of the Periplus of Scylax. Supposing that this sea, full of
weeds, which impeded the course of the Phoenician vessels, was the
mar de zargasso, we need not admit that the ancients navigated the
Atlantic beyond thirty degrees of west longitude from the meridian
of Paris.) The temperature of the Atlantic in those latitudes is
from sixteen to twenty degrees, and the north winds, which
sometimes rage there very tempestuously, drive floating isles of
seaweed into the low latitudes as far as the parallels of
twenty-four and even twenty degrees. Vessels returning to Europe,
either from Monte Video or the Cape of Good Hope, cross these banks
of Fucus, which the Spanish pilots consider as at an equal distance
from the Antilles and Canaries; and they serve the less instructed
mariner to rectify his longitude. The second bank of Fucus is but
little known; it occupies a much smaller space, in the
twenty-second and twenty-sixth degrees of latitude, eighty leagues
west of the meridian of the Bahama Islands. It is found on the
passage from the Caiques to the Bermudas.
Though a species of seaweed* (* The baudreux of the Falkland
Islands; Fucus giganteus, Forster; Laminaria pyrifera, Lamour.) has
been seen with stems eight hundred feet long, the growth of these
marine cryptogamia being extremely rapid, it is nevertheless
certain, that in the latitudes we have just described, the Fuci,
far from being fixed to the bottom, float in separate masses on the
surface of the water. In this state, the vegetation can scarcely
last longer than it would in the branch of a tree torn from its
trunk; and in order to explain how moving masses are found for ages
in the same position, we must admit that they owe their origin to
submarine rocks, which, lying at forty or sixty fathoms' depth,
continually supply what has been carried away by the equinoctial
currents. This current bears the tropic grape into the high
latitudes, toward the coasts of Norway and France; and it is not
the Gulf-stream, as some mariners think, which accumulates the
Fucus to the south of the Azores.
The causes that unroot these weeds at depths where it is generally
thought the sea is but slightly agitated, are not sufficiently
known. We learn only, from the observations of M. Lamouroux, that
if the fucus adhere to the rocks with the greatest firmness before
its fructification, it separates with great facility after that
period, or during the season which suspends its vegetation like
that of the terrestrial plants. The fish and mollusca which gnaw
the stems of the seaweeds no doubt contribute also to detach them
from their roots.
From the twenty-second degree of latitude, we found the surface of
the sea covered with flying-fish,* (* Exocoetus volitans.) which
threw themselves up into the air, twelve, fifteen, or eighteen
feet, and fell down on the deck. I do not hesitate to speak on a
subject of which voyagers discourse as frequently as of dolphins,
sharks, sea-sickness, and the phosphorescence of the ocean. None of
these topics can fail to afford interesting observations to
naturalists, provided they make them their particular study. Nature
is an inexhaustible source of investigation, and in proportion as
the domain of science is extended, she presents herself to those
who know how to interrogate her, under forms which they have never
yet examined.
I have named the flying-fish, in order to direct the attention of
naturalists to the enormous size of their natatory bladder, which,
in an animal of 6.4 inches, is 3.6 inches long, 0.9 of an inch
broad, and contains three cubic inches and a half of air. As this
bladder occupies more than half the size of the fish, it is
probable that it contributes to its lightness.
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