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It is thus found that there is a belt passing around the earth near the equator, but sometimes deviating several degrees from it, in which there is no dip; that is to say, the lines of magnetic force are horizontal. Taking any point on this belt and going north, it will be found that the north pole of the magnet gradually tends downward, the dip constantly increasing as we go farther north.
That same year, 1499, Vicente Pinzon of Palos, who with his brother Martin had made the first voyage, also secured a license and sailed southwest over the equator, discovering the Amazon River and taking possession of Brazil for Spain. Our adventurous acquaintance Ojeda also had been busy.
Still the ship went on holding steadily to her course northward, and every day drawing nearer and nearer her goal. Storms came some moderate, some severe; but the ship escaped them all with no casualties, and with but little delay. At last they passed the equator, and seemed to have entered the last stage of their journey. At length the ship came within the latitude of the Guinea coast.
At three P.M., made the island of Fernando Naronha, lying in lat. 3 55' S., lon. 32 35' W.; and between twelve o'clock Friday night and one o'clock Saturday morning crossed the equator, for the fourth time since leaving Boston, in lon. 35 W.; having been twenty-seven days from Staten Land, a distance, by the courses we had made, of more than four thousand miles.
In northern latitudes the trade wind blows from north-east, or varies but a few points from that direction. South of the equator it blows constantly from the south-east; and the "south-east trade" is more steady than the trade wind north of the line.
Occasionally one of these animals dines upon a Goldee, but the custom is not in favor with the natives. It is considered remarkable that the Bengal tiger, belonging properly to a region nearer the equator, should range so far north. On some of its excursions it reaches 53° North Latitude, and feeds upon reindeer and sables.
As for the wells of the Equator, you may think of them in their last recesses as the daily bathing-places of light; a luminous fancy is able so to scatter fitful figures of the sun, and to plunge them in thousands within those deeps.
The variations, for instance, of terrestrial magnetism, the direction of currents, the groupings of marine plants, fixing one of the grand climacteric divisions of the ocean, the temperatures changing not solely with the distance to the equator, but also with the difference of meridians: these and similar phenomena, as they broke upon him, were discerned with wonderful quickness of perception, and made to contribute important principles to the stock of general knowledge.
The heated waters of the Equator flow north and south to get cooled at the Poles, and then flow back again from the Poles to get reheated at the Equator. The form of continents, the effect of winds, the motion of the earth, and other influences, modify the flow of this great oceanic current and produce a variety of streams.
Early explorers on Mars were astonished to find that the canals were not stagnant bodies of water, but possessed currents, induced by wind, by evaporation, and the influx of fresh water from the polar ice caps. This was near the equator, however, and the water was not unreasonably cold, although the night air was, as usual, chilly.
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