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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In
Order To Avoid It We Altered Our Course During The Night.
From this
moment no light was permitted in the great cabin, to prevent our
being seen at a distance.
This precaution, which was at the time
prescribed in the regulations of the packet-ships of the Spanish
navy, was extremely irksome to us during the voyages we made in the
course of the five following years. We were constantly obliged to
make use of dark-lanterns to examine the temperature of the water,
or to read the divisions on the limb of the astronomical
instruments. In the torrid zone, where twilight lasts but a few
minutes, our operations ceased almost at six in the evening. This
state of things was so much the more vexatious to me as from the
nature of my constitution I never was subject to sea-sickness, and
feel an extreme ardour for study during the whole time I am at sea.
On the 9th of June, in latitude 39 degrees 50 minutes, and
longitude 16 degrees 10 minutes west of the meridian of the
observatory of Paris, we began to feel the effects of the great
current which from the Azores flows towards the straits of
Gibraltar and the Canary Islands. This current is commonly
attributed to that tendency towards the east, which the straits of
Gibraltar give to the waters of the Atlantic Ocean. M. de Fleurieu
observes that the Mediterranean, losing by evaporation more water
than the rivers can supply, causes a movement in the neighbouring
ocean, and that the influence of the straits is felt at the
distance of six hundred leagues.
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