Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/30

 same time these conjectures regarding early epochs are confirmed by no direct evidence, whereas in modern times many instances have been recorded of ships driven westwards by the trade winds and corresponding marine currents. Thus it was that, in the year 1500, Alvarez Cabral discovered Brazil when bound for the East Indies. Yiera y Clavijo relates that a vessel sailing from the village of Lanzarote, in the Canaries, stranded on the coast of Venezuela. In 1731 another ship with a cargo of wine setting sail from Teneriffe for another island in the Canaries, was driven westwards by a storm, at last reaching Port of Spain, in Trinidad. Being provisioned only for five or six days, the crew had been reduced to live exclusively on wine after the supplies were exhausted. On another occasion a magistrate belonging to Terceira, while endeavouring to reach this island from the neighbouring San-Jorge, was driven all the way to Brazil, whence he returned by the Lisbon route.

Fauna of the Azorian Basin. — The Sargasso Sea.

The Challenger, the Talisman, the Magenta, and other vessels recently engaged in exploring the Atlantic, have not only brought back valuable information regarding the temperature, currents, and other features of the marine depths, but the naturalists accompanying them have paid special attention to the organisms inhabiting these waters. The Azorian Atlantic having a higher temperature than the equatorial seas, is extremely rich in animal life. Certain tracts especially in the vicinity of the Canaries seem to be alive with myriads of creatures of every form and colour, some opaque and almost invisible, other transparent and bright with the most varied tints. Cetaceans, sharks preceded by their " pilots " (the pilot-fish or Naucrates ductor), and hundreds of other species, animate these waters. Flying-fish are often seen darting from the crest of one wave to another, where they fall a prey to their enemies. The nautilus moves along like a tiny ship studded with white sails ; while below this upper fauna, which migrates northwards in summer, southwards in winter, naturalists are now studying a second fauna which has a far wider range, thanks to the greater uniformity of temperature at lower depths.

As remarked nearly a century ago by Humboldt, the sea is above all a centre of animal life, few plants growing except on the rocky cliffs of the islands and encircling continents. Thus even these have their roots embedded on the terra firma. Nevertheless the Azorian Atlantic has also its deep-sea flora, the so-called sargasso (sargassum), formerly supposed to be a survival of the vanished Atlantis, a boundless plain of seaweed floating above the engulfed continent. With their branching stems, their lateral membranes resembling indented foliage, their floats almost like berries, these algae, or "grapes of the tropics" (Fucus natans, Sargassum bacciferum), might easily be taken for plants organised like those of the dry land. Nevertheless they are mere weeds like those of the surrounding shores, in which no trace of reproductive organs has ever been detected. Nor are they so much flotsam, as was once supposed, torn by the waves from the West Indian and