Physical Geography of the Great Oceans 93 



sides of the continents. One of the most striking is the 

 blance of the Gulf of Guinea on the African coast with the great 

 Central American bight stretching from Cape St Lucas at the 

 extremity of the Californian Peninsula, by Panama, to Cape 

 Blanco at the mouth of the Guayaquil river, and with the un- 

 named bight in the Indian Ocean bounded continental!} by the 

 north-west coast of Australia, and insularly by the chain of 

 islands stretching from the Peninsula of Malacca to Australia. 

 Oceanicaily these bights are homologous. It is in them that 

 the beginnings of the westeriy-running equatorial currents are 

 to be found, and perhaps more important still, it is in them 

 that the easterly-running counter equatorial currents end- 

 They are to be found in each of the three oceans, and 

 generally on the northward side of the axis of the westerly- 

 nmning current. In the Atlantic the counter equatorial 

 current is best known by it^ eastern portion, the Guinea 

 cm lent. 



The observations here recorded of the Guinea current 

 were made oo board the steamship " Buccaneer," at the invita- 

 tion of the owners, the Indiarubber, Guttapercha. and Telegraph 

 Works Company, of Sflvertown, and were carried out during 

 a survey for a telegraph caWe from Sierra Leone to St Paul 

 de Loanda. In order to render the results more intelligible, 

 some of them have been extended in diagrammatic form. 

 Diagram A shows the relation between the density of the water 

 at the surface, and at 50 fathoms below it, to the distance 

 off shore. The diagram begins on the 1st of January, when 

 the ship had steamed over 200 miles out to sea from Conakry. 

 Here the surface water, though differing from pure ocean water 

 of the same latitude by its low de: still the densest 



surface water met with in the period, the ist to the 2Oth of 

 January, embraced in the diagram. From this point the ship 

 was ran in shorewards. sounding frequently, and the parallelism 

 of the density and the distance lines is very remarkable. As 

 far as Cape Palmas it is so dose that the distance from shore 

 could almost be told from the density of the surface water. 

 After rounding Cape Palmas. the density of the surface water 

 itself lev sensitive to the distance from shore, which 



