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Updated: June 28, 2025
It is the place where the swiftly running Gulf Stream meets the fresh northeast trade-winds; and in the conflict between these opposing terrestrial forces there is raised a high and at the same time short, choppy, and irregular sea, on which small vessels toss, roll, and pitch about like corks in a boiling caldron.
Again, too, there has always existed a strong desire on the part of Western Australia to connect herself with India, conscious that there are great facilities of communication between the countries, from favourable trade-winds, and that her own climate is perhaps better suited to invalids than even that of the Cape.
The Academy of Sciences recommended the men of science who accompanied the unfortunate La Perouse, to employ small air-balloons for the purpose of ascertaining at sea the extent of the trade-winds within the tropics. Such experiments are very difficult.
"There's no danger of the fair sex ever circling the globe in a westerly direction," laughed John, "for that would make them one day older every time." The day could not have been better. Hardly a cloud was to be seen on the horizon, and the regular trade-winds blowing westward were soft and steady, and they were making excellent time.
We were standing to the southward, with the north-east trade well on our port-quarter, the captain intending to keep close to the African coast, instead of standing across to Rio de Janeiro, as is often done, and keeping to the southward of the south-east trade-winds. We sighted the Cape de Verde Islands, which, eight in number, extend between 14 degrees and 17 degrees of north latitude.
In proportion as we advanced towards the west, we found the trade-winds fix to eastward. These winds, the most generally adopted theory of which is explained in a celebrated treatise of Halley,* are a phenomenon much more complicated than most persons admit. The ideas of the celebrated English naturalist are developed in a Discourse on Earthquakes published in 1686.
The awnings were spread, chairs brought up, and the major portion of the day was spent upon the quarter-deck and poop of the vessel, which for many days had been running down before the trade-winds, intending to make Rio, and there lay in a supply of fresh provisions for the remainder of her voyage. One morning, as Alexander and Mr. Fairburn were sitting together, Alexander observed
The admiral's whole mind, however, was at present intent upon discovering the strait. As the countries described by the Indians lay to the west, he supposed that he could easily visit them at some future time, by running with the trade-winds along the coast of Cuba, which he imagined must continue on, so as to join them.
Across broad spaces of the ocean there are always steady winds to be counted on, such as the trade-winds, which are caused by the air at the Equator getting hot and rising, and being replaced by the cold air from the Poles which rushes in; besides this there are other winds which blow half the year, called monsoons, these are due to very much the same causes.
'Although far from attaching undue weight to a hypothesis, I cannot but consider it a matter of duty to seek for a connection in the facts, and feel myself constrained on account of the above-mentioned particulars, and in so far as they justify a conclusion to suppose an atmospheric current, connecting America and Africa with the region of the trade-winds, and sometimes, particularly about the 15th and 16th of May, turning towards Europe, and bringing with it this very peculiar, and apparently not African dust, in countless measure.
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