EQUINOCTIAL CURRENT. 2i) 



They were obliged to run under courses, and pro- Ciur. il 

 cceded at the rate of ten knots, although the vessel was stoi-mv" 

 not a fast sailer. In the morning of the 6th she rolled weather. 

 so much that the fore topgallant-mast was carried away. 

 On the 7th they were in the latitude of Cape Finisterre, 

 belonging to the group of granitic rocks named the 

 Sierra de Torinona, which is visible at sea to the distance 

 of 59 miles. On the 8th at sunset, they discovered 

 from the mast-head an English convoy ; and to avoid 

 them they altered their course during the night. On 

 the 9th they began to feel the effect of the great 

 current which flows from the Azores towards the Straits 

 of Gibraltar and tlie Canaries. Its direction was at 

 first east by south ; but nearer the inlet it became due 

 east, and its force was such as, between 37° and 30° lat., 

 sometimes to carry the vessel, in twenty-four hours, 

 from 21 to 80 miles eastward. 



Between the tropics, especially from the coast of Equmoctiaj 

 Senegal to the Caribbean Sea, there is a stream that '=^"^°'- 

 always flows from east to west, and which is named the 

 Equinoctial Current. Its mean rapidity may be esti- 

 mated at ten or eleven miles in twenty-four hours. 

 This movement of the waters, which is also observed in 

 the Pacific Ocean, having a direction contrary to that 

 of the earth's rotation, is supposed to be connected with Supposed 

 the latter only in so far as it changes into trade-winds <=™^^- 

 those aerial currents from the poles, which, in the 

 lower regions of the atmosphere, carry the cold air of 

 the high latitudes towards the equator ; and it is to the 

 general impulse which these winds give to the surface 

 of the ocean that the phenomenon in question is to be 

 attributed. 



This current carries the waters of the Atlantic to- its effect 

 wards the Mosq\iito and Honduras coasts, from which 

 they move northwards, and passing into the Gulf of 

 Mexico follow the bendings of the shore from Vera 

 Cruz to the mouth of the Rio del Norte, and from 

 thence to the mouths of the Mississipi)i and the shoals at 



