12G 
DEPABTUBE PBOil TOE.UFFE. 
Chapter III 
Passage from Teneriffe to South America.— The Island of Tobago.— 
Arrival at Cumana. 
¥e left the road of Santa Cruz on the 25th of June, and 
directed our course towards South America. We soon lost 
sight of the Canary Islands, the lofty mountains of which 
were covered with a reddish vapour. The Peak alone ap- 
peared from time to time, as at intervals the wind dispersed 
the clouds that enveloped the Piton. We felt, for the first 
time, how strong are the impressions left on the mind from 
the aspect ot those countries situated on the limits of the 
torrid zone, where nature appears at once so rich, so 
various, and so majestic. Our stay at Teneriffe had been 
very short, and yet we withdrew from the island as if it had 
long been our home. 
Our passage from Santa Cruz to Cumana, the most 
eastern part of the New Continent, was very fine. Wo 
cut the tropie of Cancer on the 27th; and though the 
Pizarro was not a very fast sailer, we made, in twenty days, 
the nine hundred leagues, which separate the coast of Africa 
from that of the New Continent. We passed fifty leagues 
west of Cape Bojador, Cape Blanco, aud the Cape Verd 
islands. A few land birds, which had been driven to sea by 
the impetuosity of the wind followed us for several days. 
The latitude diminished rapidly, from the parallel of 
Madeira to the tropic. When we reached the zone where 
the trade-winds are constant, wo crossed the ocean from 
east to west, on a calm sea, which the Spanish sailors call 
the Ladies Gulf, el Golfo de las Da mas. In proportion as 
advanced towards the west, we found the trade-winds fix 
to eastward, 
These winds, the most generally adopted theory of which 
is explained in a celebrated treatise of Halley,* are a phe- 
The existence of an upper current of air, which blows constantly 
from the equator to the poles, and of a lower current, which blows from 
the poles to the equator, had already been admitted, as M. Arago has 
shown, by Hooke. The ideas of the celebrated English naturalist are 
developed in a Discourse on Eartlbquakes, published in 1G86. “I think 
