80 EXTRAORDINARY PHENOMENON IN THE MEDITERRANEAN. 
The problem for solution is, what becomes of the water thus 
incessantly descending and disappearing beneath the surface of the 
island. Some have thought, as the island is in a volcanic district, 
that the water is either converted into steam or decomposed into 
its constituent elements. 
A more probable explanation presented itself to me whilst 
perusing the Report on Deep-Sea Researches by Dr. Carpenter and 
Mr. Jeffreys, read before the Royal Society in December last and 
printed in its Proceedings (vol. 19, No. 125, pp. 146-221), in which 
it is shown that whilst an wpper current from the Atlantic is always 
flowing through the Straits of Gibraltar, into the Mediterranean, 
an under current (salter and denser) is always flowing out through 
the same straits. I consider therefore that the Cephalonian stream, — 
after its disappearance, descends in the interior of the earth to the 
depth of the wnder current of the Mediterranean, with which it 
then unites and is carried along with it towards the Straits of 
Gibraltar—thus keeping the mill stream continually flowing from 
the surface of the Mediterranean. 
Extract from “Smyth on the Mediterranean Sea” :— 
There was much talk about a current in Port Argostoli, which 
the Cephalonists believed to flow uniformly against the wind 
“owing to subterraneous caverns.” It is, however, but an effect 
of the form and contour of the harbour and its vicinity as acted 
on by winds in heaping and heading up the waters of one arm 
and draining them off by the other. 
Foot Note, p. 184. 
