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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Towards The Northern Limits Of The Torrid
Zone, In Latitude 23 Degrees, Whither The North Winds Bring With An
Extreme
Rapidity the cold air of Canada, the thermometer falls at sea
as low as 16 degrees, and even lower.) We
Will not here solve the
delicate problem, as to the manner in which, within the tropics and in
the temperate zone, (for example, in the Caribbean Sea and in the
lakes of Switzerland,) these inferior strata of water, cooled to 4 or
7 degrees, act upon the temperature of the stony strata of the globe
which they cover; and how these same strata, the primitive temperature
of which is, within the tropics, 27 degrees, and at the lake of Geneva
10 degrees, react upon the half-frozen waters at the bottom of the
lakes, and of the equinoctial ocean. These questions are of the
highest importance, both with regard to the economy of animals that
live habitually at the bottom of fresh and salt waters, and to the
theory of the distribution of heat in lands surrounded by vast and
deep seas.
The lake of Valencia is full of islands, which embellish the scenery
by the picturesque form of their rocks, and the beauty of the
vegetation with which they are covered: an advantage which this
tropical lake possesses over those of the Alps. The islands are
fifteen in number, distributed in three groups;* without reckoning
Morro and Cabrera, which are already joined to the shore. (* The
position of these islands is as follows:
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