THE SARGOSSO SEA. 



161 



alarmed. They thought themselves arrived at the limit of the 

 world, where an element, too unstable to tread upon, too dense to 

 sail through, admonished the rash stranger to take warning and 

 return. They feared that the caravels would be involved be- 

 yond extrication, and that the monsters lying in wait beneath 

 the floating herbage would make an easy meal of their defence- 

 less crews. The trade-winds, then unknown, were another cause 

 of anxiety; for, if they always blew to the westward, as they 

 appeared to do, how could the ships ever return eastward to 

 Europe? In the midst of the apprehensions excited by these 

 causes, which nearly drove the terrified men to mutiny, a con- 

 trary wind sprang up, and the revolt was thus providentially 

 quelled. Columbus wrote in his journal, "this opposing wind 

 came very opportunely, for my crew was in great agitation, 

 imagining that no wind ever blew in these regions by which they 

 could return to Spain." 



But the terrors of the ignorant men soon broke out afresh. Sea- 

 weed and tropical marine plants reappeared in heavy masses, 

 and seemed to shut in the ships among their stagnant growth. 

 The breeze no longer formed billows upon the surface of the 

 waters. The sailors declared that they were in those dismal 

 quarters of the world where the winds lose their impulse and 

 the waters their equilibrium, and that soon fierce aquatic mon- 

 sters would seize hold of the keels of the ships and keep them 

 prisoners amid the weeds. In the midst of the perplexities to 

 which Columbus was thus exposed, the sea became suddenly 

 agitated, though the wind did not increase. This revival of 

 motion in the element they thought relapsed into sullen inactivity, 

 again cheered the crew into a temporary tranquillity.* 



* This tract, so thickly matted with Gulf-weed, and covering an area equal 

 in extent to the Mississippi Valley, has since been called by the Portuguese 

 the Sargasso Sea. It still exists in the same spot, and if we now hear very 

 little of it, it is because navigators have learned to avoid it. Lieut. Maury ac- 



