Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The Air, Wafted By This Current, Comes From A
Hemisphere Consisting Almost Entirely Of Water.
It traverses all the
southern equatorial zone to reach the parallel of 8 degrees north
latitude; and is consequently
Less dry, less cold, less adapted to act
as a counter-current to renew the equinoctial air and prevent its
saturation, than the northern polar current, or the breeze from the
north-east.* (* In the two temperate zones the air loses its
transparency every time that the wind blows from the opposite pole,
that is to say, from the pole that has not the same denomination as
the hemisphere in which the wind blows.) We may suppose that the
bendavales are impetuous winds which, on some coasts, for instance on
that of Guatimala, (because they are not the effect of a regular and
progressive descent of the air of the tropics towards the south pole,
but they alternate with calms), are accompanied by electrical
explosions, and are in fact squalls, that indicate a reflux, an abrupt
and instantaneous rupture, of equilibrium in the aerial ocean.
We have here discussed one of the most important phenomena of the
meteorology of the tropics, considered in its most general view. In
the same manner as the limits of the trade-winds do not form circles
parallel with the equator, the action of the polar currents is
variously felt in different meridians. The chains of mountains and the
coasts in the same hemisphere have often opposite seasons. There are
several examples of these anomalies; but, in order to discover the
laws of nature, we must know, before we examine into the causes of
local perturbations, the average state of the atmosphere, and the
constant type of its variations.
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