The ocean / By P.H. Gosse.

  • Gosse, Philip Henry, 1810-1888.
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The ocean / By P.H. Gosse. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    tides of water for the same reason as those in the glass, to a certain extent, resist the influence of this rotation, and appear to assume a motion in the opposite direction, from east to west. With respect to all the phenomena to he explained, this apparent motion is exactly the same as if it were real, and we shall consider it so. Now, examine a globe, or a map of the Atlantic, and you will see that this westerly “ set/' of the equatorial waters, meeting the coast of South America, is slightly turned through the Caribbean Sea, until it strikes the coast of Mexico, which, like an impregnable rampart, opposes its progress. The stream, impelled by the waves behind, must have an outlet, and the form of the shore drives it round the northern side of the Gulf of Mexico, until it is again bent by the peninsula of Florida. But here the long island of Cuba meets its southerly course, and, like the hunted deer, headed at every turn, the whole of the broad tide that entered the Gulf, now pent up within the compass of a 'few leagues, rushes with vast impetus through the only outlet that is open, between Florida and the Bahamas. It is as if we propelled with swiftness against the air a wide funnel, the mouth being outwards, the tube of which was long and tortuous, and which terminated at length nearly at right angles to the mouth: it is easy to imagine that a strong current of air would issue from the tube, exactly as the waters of the Gulf stream do from their narrow gorge. The waters of the Pa- cific have the same westerly flow, but its force is broken, without being turned, by the vast assem-