Page:Physical Geography of the Sea and its Meteorology.djvu/210

184 quantities of solid matter which the current from the Atlantic, holding in solution, carries into the Mediterranean. In his abstract log for March 8th, 1855, Lieutenant William Grenville Temple, of the United States ship Levant, homeward bound, has described the indraught there: "Weather fine; made 1¼ pt. lee-way. At noon, stood in to Almiria Bay and anchored off the village of Koguetas. Found a great number of vessels waiting for a chance to get to the westward, and learned from them that at least a thousand sail are weather-bound between this and Gibraltar. Some of them have been so for six weeks, and have even got as far as Malaga, only to be swept back by the current. Indeed, no vessel had been able to get out into the Atlantic for three months past." Now suppose this current, which baffled and beat back this fleet for so many days, ran no faster than two knots the hour. Assuming its depth to be 400 feet only, and its width seven miles, and that it carried in with it the average proportion of solid matter—say one thirtieth—contained in sea water; and admitting these postulates into calculation as the basis of the computation, it appears that salts enough to make no less than 88 cubic miles of solid matter, of the density of water, were carried into the Mediterranean during these 90 days. Now, unless there were some escape for all this solid matter, which has been running into that sea, not for 90 days merely, but for ages, it is very clear that the Mediterranean would, ere this, have been a vat of very strong brine, or a bed of cubic crystals.

379. The Suez Canal.—We have in this fact, viz., the difficulty of egress from the Mediterranean, and the tedious character of the navigation, under canvas, within it, the true secret of the indifference which, in commercial circles in England and the Atlantic states of Europe, is manifested towards the projected Suez Canal. But to France and Spain on the Mediterranean, to the Italian States, to Greece, and Austria, it would be the greatest commercial boon of the age. The Mediterranean is a great gulf running from west to east, penetrating the old world almost to its very centre, and separating its most civilized from its most savage communities. Its southern shores are inhabited, for the most part by an anti-commercial and thriftless people. On the northern shores the climates of each nation are nearly duplicates of the climates of her neighbours to the east and the west; consequently, these nations all cultivate the same staples,