Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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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.
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