RIVER-WATER ON THE OCEAN.
Captain Sabine found discoloured water, supposed to be that of the Amazon, 300 miles distant in the ocean from the embouchure of that river. It was about 126 feet deep. Its specific gravity was = 1·0204, and the specific gravity of the sea-water = 1·0262. This appears to be the greatest distance from land at which river-water has been detected on the surface of the ocean. It was estimated to be moving at the rate of three miles an hour, and had been turned aside by an ocean-current. “It is not a little curious to reflect,” says Sir Henry de la Beche, “that the agitation and resistance of its particles should be sufficient to keep finely comminuted solid matter mechanically suspended, so that it would not be disposed freely to part with it except at its junction with the sea-water over which it flows, and where, from friction, it is sufficiently retarded.”