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Salamis, Actium, St. Vincent, Nile and Trafalgar, pass in splendid and awful review before us.

The most remarkable of all voyages was that, undertaken by Diego Botelho Perreira, who, anxious to give early intelligence to the king of Portugal, that the sultan of Cambaya had given permission for a fortress to be erected on the Island of Diu, procured an Indian built row-boat, called a Fusta, sixteen feet six inches long; nine feet broad; and only two feet nine inches deep: which having covered with a deck, he set sail with a few men from India after the monsoon, and proceeded to Baticala. Thence he steered to Melinda; where, having taken in water and other refreshments, he again put to sea, and landed at Sofala. From Sofala he proceeded to Cape Corrientes. Then steering along the Coast, which he took care never to lose sight of, he passed the Cape in January 1537: and, meeting with favourable winds, arrived at St. Helena ; where he drew his decked boat on shore; cleared her bottom; repaired her; and ventured upon the wide Atlantic. At St. Thomas' he took in wood and water; and coasting along the shores of Africa arrived at Lisbon in the month of May.

The survivors of Barentz, who had passed an entire winter in Nova Zembla, crossed 1500 miles of sea, exposed to every danger, in which the polar regions so frightfully abound. They were forty days in performing this voyage, "in the ice, over the ice, and through the sea."

These two voyages, if executed in ancient times, and recorded in ancient history, would now be associated with ancient fable.

V.

Dampier' remarked in his various voyages, that where there were high shores, there were deep seas; and where the shores were low, the seas were shallow. To corroborate this assertion more fully, he instances the coasts of Gallicia, Portugal, Norway and Newfoundland; and those of Chili and Peru. The shores of all which countries rise in rocks or mountains; and the seas are consequently deep. Similar results are afforded by St. Helena and Juan Fernandez. The coasts of Panama, Campeachy, and the Bay of Honduras are low; so also are those of China, Siam, Bengal, Coromandel, the north side of Malacca, Borneo, Celebes, and Gilolo: those seas, therefore, are shallow. Exceptions may occasionally be found, perhaps, to these rules, but they are just, when generally applied. In the Pacific, extending from 30° of each side the equator, no tornadoes, typhons, hurricanes, or monsoons, are known. In the equinoctial seas great variety has been observed in the colours of the water; and those, too, when no change could be observed in the atmosphere; sometimes varying from grey to indigo, blue, and the deepest scarlet. In some seas their relative depths have been found to be unfathomable by the line; in others varying in a most astonishing manner. In some parts of Baffin's Bay it is only 100 fathoms; towards the shore the line will sink to 455. In Lancaster Sound Captain Ross found a depth of 674 fathoms: in Possession Bay he

1 Vol. i. p. 424.

2 Humboldt's Personal Narrative.-Vol. ii. p. 107.

found 1000; off Cape Cargenholm 1005; and off Cape Coutts 1050'. Between Greenland and Spitzbergen the depth is unfathomable. And here we may take occasion to remark, that the frigid zone of the north is occupied by land, ice, and water; while that of the south is almost entirely covered with water and ice:-and that while the temperate zone of the north is chiefly occupied by land, that of the south is almost totally deluged with water. South of the tropic of Capricorn all is ice; if we except New Holland and its neighbouring islands; a small part of America; and a still smaller part of Africa; and New Shetland. In regard to the relative temperatures, Dr. Davy found the sea water of England and that of the Cape of Good Hope, nearly of the same specific gravity. Water, taken up in the English Channel, of which a part must of necessity have been river water, was 1077; that under the line no more than 1087. The opinion, that the sea is more salt at the tropics, is not found to be true. Franklin observed, that the water on the North American coast was different in and out of soundings. Subsequent experience has confirmed the probability, that the sea becomes colder in all countries, the nearer it approaches the land. It is the same with rivers. The middle of a river, except where it runs in a current, is always warmer than it is near the banks; and the part near the bottom colder, than it is at the surface. Rivers sometimes even freeze at the bottom, when at the top there is no appearance of ice. Dr. Davy also found, that the temperature of fish

3 17,325 feet.—Voy. of Disc. in Arctic Regions, 4to. Appendix, No. iii. p. lxxxv.

Brother to the Kepler of chemistry.

exceeds that of the water, in which they live; and that the temperature of the Turtle was nearly three degrees higher; while that of the Porpoise exceeded it even one hundred degrees.

In respect to tides, it is remarkable that a current runs into the Mediterranean; while another flows out of the Baltic: that on the shores of islands, remote from continents, there are small tides; that those of the East Indies are comparatively smaller, and not so regular, as those in the English Channel; that the most irregular tides Dampier1 met with were those at Tonquin, and on the coast of New Holland: and that while in the Bay of Tonquin and the Bay of Fundy the tides rise highest, in the Baltic there are no tides at all. And here we may remark, that such resistance does the sea give to cannonballs, that when an eighteen-pound carronade was shot out of Captain Hall's ship, close upon the water, it rebounded eight or ten times: and such is the pressure of water upon any condensed volume of air within, that if a bottle, corked, sealed, and covered with cloth, is let down into the sea, to any considerable depth, it will come up with the cork driven into it.

VI.

Mankind have, from an attention to their interests, in most ages had a desire to attach seas to each other. many attempts were made to connect the Indian Ocean

1 Discourse of the trade winds, storms, tides, &c. p. 99.

2 Voy. to the Coast of Corea, 4to. p. 33.

Thus

3 This experiment was tried by Peron in the South Seas to the depth of 2144 feet.

234 The Pole;-Geographical Activity of the English.

with the Mediterranean, by forming a canal in the Isthmus of Suez. Seleucus Nicator entertained the design of joining the Euxine with the Caspian; and a similar wish has often been expressed to cut through the Isthmus of Darien. And to find a passage to Japan, China, and the whole of the eastern Asiatic coast, by means of the North Seas, has long been a favourite hope with modern governments.

It was once believed, that the region under the North Pole was one vast continent :-now it is thought to be a polar basin. The principal argument for this idea arises out of the communication from Adams to Daines Barrington, that Captain Guy had reached the eighty-third degree of latitude; and, from the mast head of his ship had discovered a clear and unincumbered sea, as far as the eye could reach: the idea is also confirmed by the circumstance, generally agreed upon, that after having passed the ice barrier of Spitzbergen, the sea is open; and that the north winds not only produce the greatest swell, but bring more clear and warm weather, than from any other point of the compass. One cause for the North Polar Sea being so little determined arises out of an apprehension, formerly entertained, that if a ship should be able to reach the pole, as soon as it should stand there, it would fall to pieces; "since the Pole would draw out of her all the iron work."

The ancients explored the land; the moderns explore the sea the English explore both land and sea. To them there is no boundary. Even the Pacific, magnificent as it is, is but a surface leading to Asia; the Indian a liquid plain leading to Africa; the Atlantic a waste leading to America. They enter every harbour; they bathe in every river; they climb every moun

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