134 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA, AOT) ITS METEOROLOGY. 



the dark mass of clouds, wliicli hastens the change of day into 

 night, the thunder-storm peals forth. The rain falls in torrents in 

 the mountains, and the clouds gradually overspread the whole 

 sky. But for the wind, which again springs up, it would be 

 alarming to the sailor, who is helpless in a calm. AVhat change 

 will take place in the air ? The experienced seaman, who has to 

 work against the trade-wind or against the monsoon, is off the 

 coast, in order to take advantage of the land breeze (the destroyer 

 of the trade) so soon as it shall come. He rejoices when the air 

 is released from the land and the breeze comes, at first feebly, but 

 afterward gro^vmg stronger, as usual dming the whole night. If 

 the land breeze meets with a squall, then it is brief, and becomes 

 feeble and micertain. We sometimes find then the permanent 

 sea breeze close to the coast, which otherwise remains twenty or 

 more English miles from it. One is not always certain to get the 

 land breeze at the fixed time. It sometimes suffers itseK to be 

 waited for ; sometimes it tarries the whole night long. During 

 the greatest part of the rainy season, the land breeze in the Java 

 Sea cannot be .depended upon. This is readily explained accord- 

 ing to the theory which ascribes the origin of the sea and land 

 breezes to the heating of the soil by day, and the coohng by 

 means of radiation by night ; for, dming the rainy season, the 

 clouds extend over land and sea, interrupting the sun's rays by 

 day and the radiation of heat by night, thus preventing the 

 variations of temperature ; and from these variations, according to 

 this th^eory, the land and sea breezes arise. Yet there are other 

 tropical regions where the land and sea breezes, even in the rainy 

 season, regularly succeed each other." 



317. One of the causes which make the west coast of Africa so 

 Sanitary influences of very Unhealthy wlicu comparod with places in cor- 

 laud and sea breezes, responding latitudes ou the opposite side of the At- 

 lantic, as in Brazil, is no doubt owing to the difference in the land 

 and sea breezes on the two sides. On the coast of Africa the land 

 breeze is " universally scorcliing hot."* There the land breeze is 

 the trade-wind. It has traversed the continent, sucldng up by the 

 way disease and pestilence from the dank places of the interior. 

 Eeeking with miasm, it reaches the coast. Peru is also within the 

 trade-^vind region, and the winds reach the west coast of South 

 America, as they do the west coast of Africa, by an overland path ; 

 . but, in the former case, instead of sweeping over dank places, they 



* Jansen. 



