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 Heavy Or
Brizote Winds, On The Contrary, Govern The Movement Of The Waters,
Which They Impel In An Opposite Direction, Towards West-South-West.
It
is the latter movement which Major Rennell, in his great hydrographic
work, calls drift; and he distinguishes it
From real currents, which
are not owing to the local action of the wind, but to differences of
level in the surface of the ocean; to the rising and accumulation of
waters in very distant latitudes. The observations which I have
collected on the force and direction of the winds, on the temperature
and rapidity of the currents, on the influence of the seasons, or the
variable declination of the sun, have thrown some light on the
complicated system of those pelagic floods that furrow the surface of
the ocean: but it is less easy to conceive the causes of the change in
the movement of the waters at the same season and with the same wind.
Why is the Gulf-stream sometimes borne on the coast of Florida,
sometimes on the border of the shoal of Bahama? Why do the waters
flow, for the space of whole weeks, from the Havannah to Matanzas, and
(to cite an example of the corriente por arriba, which is sometimes
observed in the most eastern part of the main land during the
prevalence of gentle winds) from La Guayra to Cape Codera and Cumana?
As we advanced, on the 25th of March, towards the coast of Darien, the
north-east wind increased with violence.
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