Читать книгу Legendary Islands of the Atlantic: A Study of Medieval Geography - William Henry Babcock - Страница 29

Through the dynamical forces arising from the earth’s rotation which cause moving masses in the northern hemisphere to be deflected toward the right-hand side of their path, the algae that are borne by the Gulf Stream from the tropical seas find their way toward the inner edge of the circulatory drift which moves in a clockwise direction around the central part of the North Atlantic Ocean. In this central part the flow of the surface waters is not steady in any direction, and hence the floating seaweed tends to accumulate there. This accumulation is perhaps most observable in the triangular region marked out by the Azores, the Canaries and the Cape Verde Islands, but much seaweed is also found to the westward of the middle part of this region in an elongated area extending to the 70th meridian.

The abundance of seaweed in the Sargasso Sea fluctuates much with the variation of the agencies which account for its presence, but this Office does not possess any authentic records to show that it has ever materially impeded vessels.43

Perhaps these statements are influenced by present or recent conditions. It is obvious that giant ropelike seaweeds in masses would more than materially impede the action of the galley oars, which were the main reliance in time of calm of the ancient and medieval navigators. Also it is hardly to be believed that small sailing vessels could freely drive through them with an ordinary wind. If the weeds were so unobstructive, why all these complaints and warnings out of remote centuries? In the days of powerful steamships and when the skippers of sailing vessels have learned what area of sea it is best to avoid, there may well be a lack of formal reports of impediment; but it certainly looks as though there were some basis for the long established ill repute of the Sargasso Sea.

Summary

Table of Contents

For the genesis of Atlantis we have then, first, the great idealist philosopher Plato minded to compose an instructive pseudo-historical romance of statesmanship and war and actually making a beginning of the task; and, secondly, the fragmentary cues and suggestive data which came to him out of tradition and mariners’ tales, perhaps in part through Solon and intervening transmitters, in part more directly to himself. Of this material we may name foremost the vague knowledge of vast impeded regions in the Atlantic believed to be shallow and requiring a physical explanation; then rumors of cataclysms and sunken lands in the same ocean; then legends of ancient hostilities between dwellers beyond the Pillars of Hercules and the peoples about the Mediterranean; and finally the reflection of the Persian war on the shadowy ancient past of Athens—Athens the defender and victor, Athens the Queen of the Sea.

Every solution of the Atlantis problem must be conjectural. The above is offered simply as the best conjecture to which I can see my way.