BANKS OF SEAWEEU. 
129 
of the equinoctial region on the ocean. While the trade 
wind blew strongly, the thermometer kept at 23 or 24 
degrees in the day, and at 22 or 22’5 degrees dining the 
night. The charm of the lovely climates bordering on the 
equator, can be fully enjoyed only by those w r ho have under- 
taken the voyage from Acapulco or the coasts of Chile to 
Europe in a very rough season. What a contrast between 
the tempestuous seas of the northern latitudes and the regions 
where the tranquillity of nature is never disturbed ! If the 
return from Mexico or South America to the coasts of Spain 
were as expeditious and as agreeable as the passage from the 
old to the new continent, the number of Europeans settled 
in the colonies would be much less considerable than it is at 
present. To the sea which surrounds the Azores and the 
Bermuda Islands, and which is traversed in returning to 
Europe by the high latitudes, the Spaniards have given 
the singular name of Qolfo de las Yeguas (the Mares’ Gulf). 
Colonists who are not accustomed to the sea, and who have 
led solitary lives in the forests of Guiana, the savannahs of 
the Caracas, or the Cordilleras of Peru, dread the vicinity 
of the Bermudas more than the inhabitants of Lima fear at 
present the passage round Cape Horn. 
To the north of the Cape Yerd Islands we met with great 
masses of floating seaweeds. They were the tropic grape, 
(Eucus natans), which grows on submarine rocks, only from 
the equator to the fortieth degree of north and south lati- 
tude. These weeds seem to indicate the existence of cur- 
rents in this place, as well as to south-west of the banks 
of Newfoundland. We must not confound the latitudes 
abounding in scattered weeds with those banks of marine 
plants, which Columbus compares to extensive meadows, 
the sight of which dismayed the crew of the Santa Maria 
in the forty-second degree of longitude. I am convinced, 
from the comparison of a great number of journals, that 
in the basin of the Northern Atlantic there exist two banks 
of weeds very different from each other. The most exten- 
sive is a little west of the meridian of Fayal, one of the 
Azores, between the twenty-fifth and thirty-sixth degrees 
of latitude.* The temperature of the Atlantic in those 
* It would appear that Phoenician vessels came “ in thirty days’ sail, 
with an easterly wind,” to the weedy sea, which the Portuguese and 
