United States or Guyana ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The application of gas for heating purposes had not been encouraged, and was still made difficult in consequence of the objectionable practice of reducing the pressure in the mains during daytime to the lowest possible point consistent with prevention of atmospheric indraught."
In our run from the latitude of 12 degrees south to 48 degrees south the ship was set 2 degrees 30 minutes to the eastward by currents; and from the latitude of 48 degrees south to Staten Land the currents set us to the westward 2 degrees 43 minutes; which I imagine to have been occasioned by an indraught into the Straits of Magellan.
There was a strong indraught of a knot an hour into Spencer's Gulf. Kangaroo Island has no remarkable features; whilst Althorpe and Quoin islands are sufficiently striking to be recognized by anyone who has once seen them.
There is a fine reddish-yellow sand in the lower air-strata; we see it, we feel it, and we know that it comes from the desert-tracts of northern Africa. The air rises en masse from the Great Sahara; the vacuum is speedily filled by the heavier and cooler indraught from the north or south, and the higher strata form the upper current flowing from the Equator to the Poles.
But the tide, too, was running hard from the south, fighting the wind; and, at the moment when all seemed terribly uncertain, swept them past the opening and into the swift-running channel, where the indraught sucked them through to the more open water beyond. Although the Belle Suzanne was in more open water now, the danger was not over.
"Unless," says Dampier, "the high tides and indraught thereabout should be occasioned by the mouth of some large river, which hath often low lands on each side of the outlet, and many islands and shoals lying at its entrance; but I rather thought it a channel or strait than a river." To quote the words of Flinders:
A long and hard tussle it was, I assure you, to fight against the indraught, and to drag my frame through the long hillocky gorge. At last, however, I managed it; and to see the open waves again put strength into my limbs, and vigor into my knocked-about brain. I suppose that you can not understand it, Mary, but I never enjoyed a thing more than the danger of crossing that strip of moonlight.
This frequent discovery of the Centurion from the shore was somewhat extraordinary, for the pitch of the cape is not high, and she usually kept from ten to fifteen leagues distant, though once, indeed, by an indraught of the tide, as was supposed, they found themselves in the morning within seven leagues of the land.
The old gentleman was very much startled when he heard there was a lady in the case, and very emphatically observed, that a man had better be sucked into the gulf of Florida than once get into the indraught of a woman; because, in one case, he may with good pilotage bring out his vessel safe between the Bahamas and the Indian shore; but in the other there is no outlet at all, and it is in vain to strive against the current; so that of course he must be embayed, and run chuck upon a lee-shore.
It is well known, that where there are deep inlets, and large creeks into low lands running up from the sea, and not occasioned by rivers of fresh water, there will always be a great indraught of the flood-tide, the direction of which will be determined by the position or direction of the coast which forms the entrance of such inlet, whatever be its course at sea; and where the tides are weak, which upon this coast is generally the case, a large inlet will, if I may be allowed the expression, attract the flood-tide for many leagues.
Word Of The Day