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Updated: June 24, 2025
How the early navigators so successfully avoided the rocks and shoals of this coast, how they managed to weather the confusing tides, hurricanes, and monsoons, is a mystery, while so many of our stoutest ships, guided by experienced seamen, and protected by all modern appliances, have been lost in the same tracks.
The American Witch of the Wave had a ninety-day voyage to her credit, and the Comet ran from Liverpool to Shanghai in eighty-four days. Luck was a larger factor on this route than in the California or Australian trade because of the fitful uncertainty of the monsoons, and as a test of speed it was rather unsatisfactory.
"Know ye the shepherd that gathers his flock Where the gales of the equinox blow From each unknown reef and sunken rock In the Gulf of Mexico, "While the monsoons growl, and the trade-winds bark, And the watch-dogs of the surge Pursue through the wild waves the ravenous shark That prowls around their charge?
Practically the year is divided into two parts by the "monsoons."* The monsoon is not a storm, as many people suppose, from a vague association of the word "typhoon," but a steady wind blowing, in the case of the Malay Peninsula, for six months from the north-east, bringing down the Chinamen in their junks, and for six months from the southwest, bringing traders from Arabia and India.
There is a clear entrance from the west among the coral reefs that border the land, and there is good anchorage for vessels, on one side of the village or the other, in both the east and west monsoons.
Larger vessels are then obliged to seek protection in the port of Cavite, seven miles further down the coast; but during the north-east monsoons they can safely anchor half a league from the coast.
Monsoons are the periodical winds which blow during one-half the year from east to west, during the other half from west to east. The Black Town is that part of the town in which the poorer classes of inhabitants reside. That neither beauty nor cleanliness are to be sought there, is a matter of course. There are in all only 6,000 Parsees in the island of Bombay.
In the stormy waters of the Formosa channel, where the monsoons raise a mountainous sea, thousands of fishing-boats, far out of sight of land, ply their business in weather which would cause the masters of English smacks to run for shelter.
In the latter part of August and September, strong gales are felt from the south, while in December and January the winds are found to come from the northward; but light winds usually prevail from the southwest during the wet season, and from the opposite quarter, the dry, following closely the order of the monsoons in the China seas.
Nor was it till long afterwards that I learned how much the force and direction of the Trade-winds are liable to modification by the particular position which the sun occupies in the heavens; or how far the rotatory motion of the earth, combined with the power which the sun possesses of heating certain portions of the circumambient air, are the regulating causes of the Trades, Monsoons, and, indeed, of all the other winds by which we are driven about.
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