OP CUBBENT3. 203 



end the current, renders the sea rough and agitate il. ID 

 calm weather, the vessels going from Carthagena to Rio 

 Sinu, at the mouth of the Atrato and at Portobello, are 

 impeded in their course by the currents of the coast. The 

 heavy or brizote winds, on the contrary, govern the move- 

 ment of the waters, which they impel in an opposite 

 direction, towards W.S.W. It is the latter movement 

 which Major Eennell, in his great hydrographic work, calls 

 drift ; and he distinguishes it from real currents, which are 

 not owing to the local action of the wind, but to differences 

 of level in the surface of the ocean ; to the rising and ac- 

 cumulation of waters in very distant latitudes. The obser- 

 vations which I have collected on the force and direction of 

 the winds, on the temperature and rapidity of the currents, 

 on the influence of the seasons, or the variable declination 

 of the sun, have thrown some light on the complicated 

 system of those pelagic floods that furrow the surface of 

 the ocean : but it is less easy to conceive the causes of the 

 change in the movement of* the waters at the same season 

 and with the same wind. Why is the Gulf-stream some- 

 times borne on the coast of Florida, sometimes on the 

 border of the shoal of Bahama? Why do the waters flow, 

 tor the space of whole weeks, from the Havannah to Ma- 

 tanzas, and (to cite an example of the corriente por arriba, 

 which is sometimes observed in the most eastern part of the 

 main land during the prevalence of gentle winds) from La 

 Guayra to Cape Codera and Cumana ? 



As we advanced, on the 25th of March, towards the coast 

 of Darien, the north-east wind increased with violence. 

 We might have imagined ourselves transported to another 

 climate. The sea became very rough during the night, yet 

 the temperature of the water kept up (from lat. 10 30', to 

 9 47') at 25 - 8. We perceived, at sunrise, a part of tho 

 archipelago* of Saint Bernard, which closes the gulf of 

 Morrosquillo on the north. A clear spot between the clouda 



* It is composed of the islands Mucara, Ceycen, Maravilla, Tintipan, 

 Panda, Pal ma, Mangles, and Salamanquilla, which rise little above the 

 sea. Several of them have the form of a bastion. There are two pas- 

 sages in the middle of this archipelago, from seventeen to twenty fathoms. 

 Large vessels can pass between the Isla Panda aud Tmt.jmn, and be- 

 tween the l&la de Mangles and Palrua. 



