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APPENDIX. 
TABLE Iir. 
CURRENTS. 
In my narrative I have occasionally referred to a Table of Currents in the Appendix, 
but on collecting these observations I find that they would occupy several pages ; and I have 
therefore been obliged to omit them. In order, however, that these observations, so useful 
to seamen, might not be wholly lost, I have inserted the average rate and direction of the 
current in the article on “ Passages.” 
Humboldt, Sir Erasmus Gower, and others, who have given the rate of the current in 
the Atlantic between the tropics, have limited its motion to 8 and 10 miles a day. In our 
route through this ocean it appeared to run at the average rate of 1 1 .5 miles per day in the 
strength of the N. E. trade, and 24.5 per day in the S. E. trade, near Fernando Noronha. 
In the South Pacific Ocean, about the parallel of 27° it averaged 9 miles a day ; and nearer 
the equator, i. e. from 18° S. to 4° N. in the meridian of Otaheite, 16.5 miles per day. 
Nearer the coast of South America, between the parallels of 8° N. and 19° S. about the 
meridian of 103° W. it was further increased to 28 miles a day. 
In both oceans there appears to be on the whole a north-easterly current between the 
trade winds ; we found that in the Atlantic average 13 miles a day, and in the Pacific 23 
miles a day. In the vicinity of the Gallapagos, however, there is an exception to this remark, 
as the current there appears always to run to the westward, and with considerable rapidity. 
The rates of the currents in both oceans are materially different in different meridians ; 
those in the Atlantic increasing with westerly longitude, and those in the Pacific, on the con- 
trary, decreasing — the former attaining its maximum near the Gulf of Mexico, the latter near 
the Gallapagos. They are also affected by the westerly monsoons. 
