^02 'i'il^ PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA. 



865. Mere altitude, with, its consequent refrigeration, does not 

 Influences favorable to Seem as favorable as mountain peaks and solid sur- 

 heavy precipitation, f^ces to tlic coudeusation and precipitation of vapor 

 in the air. In the trade-wind regions out at sea it seldom rains ; 

 but let an island rise never so little above the water, and the pre- 

 cipitation upon it becomes copious. Colonel Sjkes (§ 827) re- 

 ports* the rain-fall at Cherraponjie, a mountain station 4500 feet 

 high in India, lat. 25° 16' K, long. 91° 43' E., to be 577.6 inches 

 during the six months of S.W. monsoons — from May to October. 

 Surely no one will maintain that tbis vapor, after rising from the 

 sea, reached the height of 4500 feet for the first time when it was 

 blown upon Cherraponjie. Islands in the South Sea are everlast- 

 ingly cloud-capped. If it be mere refrigeration that condenses 

 this vapor, why, one might ask, should not the clouds form at the 

 same height above the sea, whether there be an island below or 

 not, and why should not these clouds precipitate as copiously upon 

 the water as they do upon the land ? We only know that they 

 do not. 



866. Captains King and Fitz Roy exposed their rain-gauge on 

 The climates of corre- ^hc wcstcm slopes of the Patagouiau Andes, and 

 latuudef SS aSd ^^ collcctcd 153.75 iuchcs in forty-one days ; that 

 ^■^"^h- is, at the rate, as already (§ 827) stated, of 1368.7 

 inches the year. The latent heat that is liberated during these 

 rains gives to Eastern Patagonia its mild climate. It is this latent 

 heat which, causes the irregularity in the barometric curve (§ 858) 

 between the parallels of 50°-55° S. Here the westerly winds 

 prevail ; they carry over to the eastern coasts the air that, in pass- 

 ing the mountains, is warmed by this liberated heat ; and thus, as 

 already (§ 729) explained, we have an exception to tbe rule under 

 which meteorologists ascribe cold and severe climates to the wind- 

 ward or western, soft and mild to the leeward or eastern, shores 

 of extra-tropical oceans. Labrador and the Falkland Islandsf are 

 in corresponding latitudes north and south. They are both, on 

 the windward side of the Atlantic ; they occupy relatively the 

 same position with regard to . the wind. Labrador is almost un- 

 inhabitable on account of the severity of its climate, but in the 



* Report of the twenty-second meeting of the British Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science, held at Belfast in September, 1852. 

 f Maury's Sailing Directions, sixth edition, p. 553. 



