HKB
Malo, a seaport of Brittany. The tides in the Basin of Mines, at the head of the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia, rise to the height of seventy feet.
There are, however, some coasts where the tides seem to offer an exception to the rule above mentioned; for while there is scarcely any rise in the estuary of the Plata in S. America, there is an extremely high tide on the open coast of Patagonia, farther to the south. Yet even in this region the tides reach their greatest elevation (about fifty feet) in the Straits of Magellan, and so far at least they conform to the general rule.[382]
Currents.--The most extensive and best determined system of currents, is that which has its source in the Indian Ocean under the influence of the trade winds; and which, after doubling the Cape of Good Hope, inclines to the northward, along the western coast of Africa, then across the Atlantic, near the equator, where it is called the equatorial current, and is lost in the Caribbean Sea, yet seems to be again revived in the current which issues from the Gulf of Mexico. From thence it flows rapidly through the Straits of Bahama, taking the name of the Gulf Stream, and passing in a northeasterly direction, by the Banks of Newfoundland, towards the Azores.
We learn from the posthumous work of Rennell on this subject, that the Lagullas current, so called from the cape and bank of that name, is formed by the junction of two streams, flowing from the Indian Ocean; the one from the channel of Mozambique, down the southeast coast of Africa; the other from the ocean at large. The collective stream is from ninety to one hundred miles in breadth, and runs at the rate of from two and a half to more than four miles per hour. It is at length turned westward by the Lagullas bank, which rises from a sea of great depth to within one hundred fathoms of the surface. It must therefore be inferred, says Rennell, that the current here is more than one hundred fathoms deep, otherwise the main body of it would pass across the bank, instead of being deflected westward, so as to flow round the Cape of Good Hope. From this cape it flows northward, as before stated, along the western coast of Africa, taking the name of the South Atlantic current. It then enters the Bight, or Bay of Benin, and is turned westward, partly by the form of the coast there, and partly, perhaps, by the Guinea current, which runs from the north into the same great bay. From the centre of this bay proceeds the equatorial current already mentioned, holding a westerly direction across the Atlantic, which it traverses, from the coast of Guinea to that of Brazil, flowing afterwards by the shores of Guiana to the West Indies. The breadth of this current varies from 160 to 450 geographical miles, and its velocity is from twenty-five to seventy-nine miles per day, the mean rate being about thirty miles. The length of its whole course is about 4000 miles. As it skirts the coast of Guiana, it is increased by the influx of the waters of the Amazon and Orinoco, and by their junction acquires accelerated velocity. After passing the island of Trinidad it expands, and is almost lost in the Caribbean Sea; but there appears to be a general movement of that sea towards the Mexican Gulf, which discharges the most powerful of all currents through the Straits of Florida, where the waters run in the northern part with a velocity of four or five miles an hour, having a breadth of from thirty-five to fifty miles.[383]