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Updated: June 3, 2025
The gale gradually blew itself out, leaving behind only a long and very heavy swell to denote the deep-reaching disturbance that the ocean had endured. And now we were within the range of the Sargasso Weed, that mysterious FUCUS that makes the ocean look. like some vast hayfield, and keeps the sea from rising, no matter how high the wind.
It was not with adverse winds or a rough sea that the admiral had to contend, but with a superstitious crew often moved to mutiny, terrified by the strange variation of the needle, questioning whether the steady trade winds that bore them on would ever permit them to return, certain that the Sargasso Sea would prove that impenetrable marsh of which they had heard.
From time to time the boat would meet floating prairies, great fields of seaweed dislodged from the Sargasso Sea. Enormous tortoises drowsed in the midst of these clumps of gulf-weed, serving as islands of repose to the seagulls perched on their shells.
Beyond this, it is not to be overlooked that the mountains were cursed with a considerable incubus of naturally weak or depraved characters, not lowland "poor whites," but a miscellaneous flotsam from all quarters, which, after more or less circling round and round, was drawn into the stagnant eddy of highland society as derelicts drift into the Sargasso Sea.
There is Columbus and Peary and Stanley and Amundsen, all av thim gr-reat min, but whin you come to compare thim with our hero, phwat have they done? "Look at Columbus. What is his claim to glory? Did Columbus iver swim out into th' stinkin' Sargasso and come back with a good dinner for his star-r-vin' min? Histh'ry does not say so. He discovered America, Columbus did. What is America?
No storms arose to cause anxiety to the brave, or to terrify the timid, and few incidents worthy of notice occurred until after they had doubled the Cape of Good Hope. But soon after this they met with an adventure which deserves record. On the troubled breast of the Atlantic, a little to the southward of that great collection of sea-weed, known by the name of the Sargasso Sea, lay a large ship.
On returning on deck, I told the first officer that I really thought there must be land ahead. "No, Walter, no fear of that," answered Mr Thudicumb; "we are crossing the Sargasso Sea. You will observe that it is merely sea-weed and drift-wood collected in this spot from all parts of the ocean. The currents and winds bring it, but why this place is selected I do not exactly know.
After all we got little of the sargasso. Only in a sailing ship, and in calms or light breezes, can its treasures be explored. Twelve knots an hour is a pace sufficient to tear off the weed, as it is hauled alongside, all living things which are not rooted to it.
An extensive tract of water is this, inclosed by the warm current of the Gulf Stream, and thickly covered with the wrack, called by the Spaniards "sargasso," the abundance of which so seriously impeded the progress of Columbus's vessel on his first voyage.
Although at a distance it was not perceptible that she was an abandoned craft, a near view showed that it must have been some time, perhaps even a period of years, since she had been trapped in the Sargasso.
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