OURKENTS OF THE SEA. 187 



under current from the Mediterranean, we may begin by re- 

 marking that we know that ihere is a current always setting 

 in at the surface from the Atlautic, and that this is a salt-water 

 current, which carries an immense amount of salt into that sea. 

 "We know, moreover, that that sea is not salting up ; and there- 

 fore, independently of the postulate (§ 374) and of observations, 

 we might infer the existence of an under current, through which 

 this salt finds its way out into the broad ocean again.* 



384. Tlie drift of the Phoenix. — With regard to this outer and 

 under current, we have observations telling of its existence as 

 long ago as 1712. " In the year 1712," says Dr. Hudson, in a 

 paper communicated to the Philosophical Society in 1724, 

 " Monsieur du L'Aigle, that fortunate and generous commander 

 of the privateer called the Phoenix, of Marseilles, giving chase 

 near Ceuta Point to a Dutch ship bound to Holland, came up 

 vith her in the middle of the Gut between Tariffa and Tangier, 

 and there gave her one broadside, which directly sunk her, all 

 her men being saved by Monsieur du L'Aigle ; and a few days 

 after, the Dutch ship, with her cargo of brandy and oil, arose on 

 the shore near Tangier, which is at least four leagues to the 

 westward of the place where she sunk, and directly against the 

 strength of the current, which has persuaded mauy men that 

 there is a recurrency in the deep water in the middle of the Gut 



* Dr. Smith appears to have been the first to conjecture this explanation, 

 which he did in 1673 {vide Philosophical Transactions). This continual in- 

 draught into the Mediterranean appears to have been a vexed question among: 

 the navigators and philosophers even of those times. Dr. Smith alludes to 

 several hypotheses which had been invented to solve these phenomena, such as 

 subterraneous vents, cavities, exhalation by the sun's beams, etc., and then offers 

 his conjecture, which, in his own words, is, " that there is an under current, by 

 which as great a quantity of water is carried out as comes flowing in. To con- 

 firm which, besides what I have said above about the difference of tides in the 

 oflSng and at the shore in the Downs, which necessaiily supposes an under 

 current, I shall present you with an instance of the like nature in the Baltic 

 Sound, as I received it from an able seaman who was at the making of the 

 trial. He told me that, being there in one of the king's frigates, they went 

 with their pinnace into the mid stream, and were carried violently by the cur- 

 rent; that, soon after this, they sunk a bucket with a heavy cannon ball to a 

 certain depth of water, which gave a check to the boat's motion ; and, sinking 

 it still lower and lower, the boat was driven ahead to the windward against the 

 upper current : the current aloft, as he added, not beiug over four or five 

 fathoms deep, and that the lower the bucket was let fall, they found the imder 

 current the stronger." 



