Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The Difference Observed Was
12 Minutes 55 Seconds, Which Arose No Doubt From The Uncertainty Of
The Refraction For A Zenith Distance, Of Which Observations Are
Wanting.
We were surprised at the extreme slowness with which the lower limb
of the sun seemed to detach itself from the horizon.
This limb was
not visible till 4 hours 56 minutes 56 seconds. The disc of the
sun, much flattened, was well defined; during the ascent there was
neither double image nor lengthening of the lower limb. The
duration of the sun's rising being triple that which we might have
expected in this latitude, we must suppose that a fog-bank, very
uniformly extended, concealed the true horizon, and followed the
sun in its ascent. Notwithstanding the libration of the stars,*
which we had observed towards the east, we could not attribute the
slowness of the rising to an extraordinary refraction of the rays
occasioned by the horizon of the sea; for it is precisely at the
rising of the sun, as Le Gentil daily observed at Pondicherry, and
as I have several times remarked at Cumana, that the horizon sinks,
on account of the elevation of temperature in the stratum of the
air which lies immediately over the surface of the ocean. (* A
celebrated astronomer, Baron Zach, has compared this phenomenon of
an apparent libration of the stars to that described in the
Georgics (lib. 50 v. 365). But this passage relates only to the
falling stars, which the ancients, (like the mariners of modern
times) considered as a prognostic of wind.)
The road, which we were obliged to clear for ourselves across the
Malpays, was extremely fatiguing.
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