May Not These Submarine Islands Act Upon The Formation And Accumulation Of The Vesicular Vapours In Some Other Way Than By Cooling The Waters Of The Surface?

Quitting the bank of La Vibora, we passed between the Baxo Nuevo and the light-house of Camboy; and

On the 22nd March we passed more than thirty leagues to westward of El Roncador (The Snorer), a name which this shoal has received from the pilots who assert, on the authority of ancient traditions, that a sound like snoring is heard from afar. If such a sound be really heard, it arises, no doubt, from a periodical issuing of air compressed by the waters in a rocky cavern. I have observed the same phenomenon on several coasts, for instance, on the promontories of Teneriffe, in the limestones of the Havannah,* (* Called by the Spanish sailors El Cordonazo de San Francisco.) and in the granite of Lower Peru between Truxillo and Lima. A project was formed at the Canary Islands for placing a machine at the issue of the compressed air and allowing the sea to act as an impelling force. While the autumnal equinox is everywhere dreaded in the sea of the West Indies (except on the coast of Cumana and Caracas), the spring equinox produces no effect on the tranquillity of those tropical regions: a phenomenon almost the inverse of that observable in high latitudes. Since we had quitted La Vibora the weather had been remarkably fine; the colour of the sea was indigo-blue and sometimes violet, owing to the quantity of medusae and eggs of fish (purga de mar) which covered it. Its surface was gently agitated. The thermometer kept up, in the shade, from 26 to 27 degrees; not a cloud arose on the horizon although the wind was constantly north, or north-north-west. I know not whether to attribute to this wind, which cools the higher layers of the atmosphere, and there produces icy crystals, the halos which were formed round the moon two nights successively. The halos were of small dimensions, 45 degrees diameter. I never had an opportunity of seeing and measuring any* of which the diameter had attained 90 degrees. (* In Captain Parry's first voyage halos were measured round the sun and moon, of which the rays were 22 1/2 degrees; 22 degrees 52 minutes; 38 degrees; 46 degrees. North-west Passage, 1821.) The disappearance of one of those lunar halos was followed by the formation of a great black cloud, from which fell some drops of rain; but the sky soon resumed its fixed serenity, and we saw a long series of falling-stars and bolides which moved in one direction and contrary to that of the wind of the lower strata.

On the 23rd March, a comparison of the reckoning with the chronometric longitude, indicated the force of a current bearing towards west-south-west. Its swiftness, in the parallel of 17 degrees, was twenty to twenty-two miles in twenty-four hours.

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