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On this parallel of latitude is the high ridge and backbone of the tradewinds, which about Cooktown amount often to a hard gale. I had been charged to navigate the route with extra care, and to feel my way over the ground.
On the morning of September 6 I found three flying-fish on deck, and a fourth one down the fore-scuttle as close as possible to the frying-pan. It was the best haul yet, and afforded me a sumptuous breakfast and dinner. The Spray had now settled down to the tradewinds and to the business of her voyage. Later in the day another droger hove in sight, rolling as badly as her predecessor.
We sailed therefore from Port Praya on the 20th of April, and had a very bad passage, as we were twenty-one days before we could pass the equinoctial. White between the two tradewinds, we had usually slight breezes, varying all round the compass, and sometimes heavy squalls of wind, with thunder, lightning, and rain.
The first night after the tradewinds left us, while we were in the latitude of the island of Cuba, we had a specimen of a true tropical thunder storm. A light breeze had been blowing directly from aft during the first part of the night which gradually died away, and before midnight it was dead calm, and a heavy black cloud had shrouded the whole sky.
There had to be the strength to battle with the furious tempests of Cape Horn and at the same time the driving power to sweep before the sweet and steadfast tradewinds. Such a queenly clipper was the Flying Cloud, the achievement of that master builder, Donald McKay, which sailed from New York to San Francisco in eighty-nine days, with Captain Josiah Creesy in command.
At present your principal sources of power are food, fuel, electricity, the heat of the interior of the earth, wind, and tide. From the first two you cannot expect much more than now, but from the internal heat everywhere available, tradewinds, and falling water, as at Niagara, and from tides, you can obtain power almost without limit.
When I had my jorum of the eminent physician's Samoan prescription before me, I barkened to the wisdom of the mariners. Captain. William Pincher, who had at my first meeting informed me he was known as Lying Bill, explained to me that some ignorant landsmen stated that this tidal regularity was caused by the steady drift of the tradewinds at certain hours of the day.
Upon the Gaboon the wet seasons are synchronous with the vertical suns at the vernal and autumnal equinoxes. "The rainy season of a place within the tropics always begins when the sun has reached the zenith of that place. Then the tradewinds, blowing regularly at other seasons, become gradually weaker, and at length cease and give way to variable winds and calms.
I was therefore necessitated to go eastward by the Cape of Good Hope; and when I should be past it it was requisite I should keep in a pretty high latitude, to avoid the general tradewinds that would be against me, and to have the benefit of the variable winds: by all which I was in a manner unavoidably determined to fall in first with those parts of New Holland I have hitherto been describing.
That hypothetical voyage was the precursor of the great journey of Columbus. Without the tradewinds this historic discoverer never could have found the West Indies. Suppose that a strong west wind had blown him backward on his course when his men were mutinous. Suppose that he had been forced to beat against head winds week after week.
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