CURRENTS OF THE SEA. I53 



miria Bay, and anchored off the village of Eoguetas. Found a 

 great niimher of vessels waiting for a chance to get to the west- 

 ward, and learned from them that at least a thousand sail are 

 weather-bound between this and Gibraltar. Some of them have 

 been so for six weeks, and have even got as far as Malaga, only 

 to be swept back by the current. Indeed, no vessel has been able 

 to get out into the Atlantic for three months past." 



417. Now, suppose this current, which baffled and beat back 

 this fleet for so many days, ran no faster than two knots the hour. 

 Assumino' its depth to be 400 feet only, and its width seven miles, 

 and that it carried in with it the average proportion of solid matter 

 — say one thirtieth — contained in sea water ; and admitting these 

 postulates into calculation as the basis of the computation, it ap- 

 pears that salts' enough to make no less than 88 cubic miles of 

 solid matter, of the density of water, were carried into the Medi- 

 terranean during these 90 days. Now, unless there were some es- 

 cape for all this solid matter, which has been running into that 

 sea, not for 90 days merely, but for ages, it is very clear that the 

 Mediterranean would, ere this, have been a vat of very strong 

 brine, or a bed of cubic crystals. 



418. Let us see the results of actual observation upon the den- 

 sity of water in the Ked Sea and the Mediterranean, and upon the 

 under currents that run out from these seas. 



419. Four or five years ago, Mr. Morris, chief engineer of the 

 Oriental Company's steam-ship Ajdaha, collected specimens of Red 

 Sea water all the way from Suez to the Straits of Babelmandeb, 

 which were afterward examined by Dr. Giraud, who reported the 

 following results :* 



Latitude. Longitude. Spec. Grav. Saline Cont. 



420. These observations ag-ree with the theoretical deductions 



* Transact, of the Bombay Geograph. Soc, vol. ix., May, 1849, to August, 1850. 



