662 COSMOS. 



currents which traverse the Atlantic Ocean, like rivers of 

 very variable breadth. The actual equatorial current, the 

 movement of the waters between the tropics, was first des- 

 cribed by Columbus. He expresses himself most positively 

 and generally, on the subject, on his third voyage, saying, " the 

 waters move with the heavens (con los cielos) from east to 

 west." Even the direction of separate floating masses of sea- 

 weed confirmed this view.* A small pan of tinned iron, 

 w r hich he found in the hands of the natives of the island of 

 Guadaloupe, confirmed Columbus in the idea that it might 

 be of European origin and obtained from the remains of a 

 shipwrecked vessel, borne by the equatorial current from Spain 

 to the coasts of America. In his geognostic fancies, he 

 regarded the existence of the series of the smaller Antilles 

 and the peculiar configuration of the larger islands, or, in 

 other words, the correspondence in the direction of their 



* The great attention paid by the early navigators to natural pheno- 

 mena may be seen in the oldest Spanish accounts. Diego de Lepe, for 

 instance, found, in 1499 (as we learn from a witness in the law-suit against 

 the heirs of Columbus), by means of a vessel having valves, which did 

 not open until it had reached the bottom, that at a distance from the 

 mouth of the Orinoco, a stratum of fresh water of 6 fathoms depth flowed 

 above the salt water (Navarrete, Viages y Descubrim., t. iii. p. 549). 

 Columbus drew milk-white sea water, (" white as if meal had been 

 mixed with it,") on the south coast of Cuba and carried it to Spain in 

 bottles (Vida del Almirante, p. 56). I have myself been at the same 

 spots, for the purpose of determining longitudes, and it surprised me to 

 think that the milk-white colour of sea-water, so common on shoals, 

 should have been regarded by the experienced Admiral as a new and un- 

 expected phenomenon. With reference to the gulf-stream itself, which 

 must be regarded as an important cosmical phenomenon, many effects 

 had been observed long before the discovery of America, produced by 

 the sea washing on shore at the Canaries and the Azores stems of bam- 

 boos, trunks of pines, corpses of strange aspect from the Antilles, and 

 even living men in canoes "which could never sink.*' These effects were 

 however then attributed solely to the strength of the westerly gales ( Vida 

 del Almirante, cap. 8; Herrera, Dec. i. lib. i. cap. 2, lib. ix. cap. !J2); 

 whilst the movement of the waters, which is wholly independent of the 

 direction of the winds the returning stream of the oceanic current, which 

 brings every year tropical fruits from the West Indian Islands to the 

 coasts of Ireland and Norway, was not accurately recognized. Compare 

 the memoir of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, On the Possibility of a North- 

 west Passage to Cathay, in Hakylut, Navigations and Voyages, vol. iii. 

 p. 14; Herrera, Dec. i. lib. ix. cap. 12; and Examencrit., t. ii. pp. 247- 

 257 ; t. iii. pp. 99-108. 



