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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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. I found the
temperature of the sea somewhat diminished; in latitude 12 degrees 35
minutes it was only 25.9 degrees (air 27.0 degrees). During the whole
day the firmament exhibited a spectacle which was thought remarkable
even by the sailors and which I had observed on a previous occasion
(June 13th, 1799). There was a total absence of clouds, even of those
light vapours called dry; yet the sun coloured, with a fine rosy tint,
the air and the horizon of the sea.
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