Sic segnis humor æquoris pigri stupet.
Adjicit et illud, plurimum inter gurgites
Exstare fucum, et sæpe virgulti vice
Retinere puppim ...
Hæc inter undas multa cæspitem jacet,
Eamque late gens Hibemorum colit.
When we consider that the sea-weed (fucus), the mud or slime (πηλὸς), the shallowness of the sea, and the perpetual calms, are always regarded by the ancients as characteristic of the Western Ocean beyond the Pillars of Hercules, we feel inclined, especially on account of the reference to the calms, to ascribe this to Punic cunning, to the tendency of a great trading people to hinder others, by terrific descriptions, from competing with them in maritime trading westwards. But even in the genuine writings of the Stagyrite,[[AN]] the same opinion is retained regarding the absence of wind, and Aristotle attempts to explain a false notion, or, as it seems to me, more correctly speaking, a fabulous mariner’s story, by an hypothesis regarding the depth of the sea. The stormy sea between Gades and the Islands of the Blest (Cadiz and the Canaries) can in truth in no way be compared with the sea, which lies between the tropics, ruffled only by the gentle trade-winds (vents alisés), and which has been very characteristically named by the Spaniards[[AO]] El Golfo de las Damas.
From very careful personal researches and from comparison of the logs of many English and French vessels, I am led to believe that the old and very indefinite expression Mar de Sargasso, refers to two fucus banks, the larger of which is of an elongated form, and is the easternmost one, lying between the parallels of 19° and 34°, in a meridian 7° westward of the Island of Corvo, one of the Azores; while the smaller and westernmost bank is of a roundish form, and is found between Bermuda and the Bahama Islands (lat. 25°–31°, long. 66°–74°). The principal diameter of the small bank, which is traversed by ships sailing from Baxo de Plata (Caye d’Argent,) northward of St. Domingo to the Bermudas, appears to me to have a N. 60° E. direction. A transverse band of fucus natans, extending in an east-westerly direction between the latitudes of 25° and 30°, connects the greater with the smaller bank. I have had the pleasure of seeing these views adopted by my lamented friend Major Rennell, and confirmed, in his great work on Currents, by many new observations.[[AP]] The two groups of sea-weed, together with the transverse band uniting them, constitute the Sargasso Sea of the older writers, and collectively occupy an area equal to six or seven times that of Germany.
The vegetation of the ocean thus offers the most remarkable example of social plants of a single species. On the main land the Savannahs or grass plains of America, the heaths (ericeta), and the forests of Northern Europe and Asia, in which are associated coniferous trees, birches, and willows, produce a less striking uniformity than do these thalassophytes. Our heaths present in the north not only the predominating Calluna vulgaris, but also Erica tetralix, E. ciliaris, and E. cinerea; and in the south, Erica arborea, E. scoparia, and E. Mediterranea. The uniformity of the view presented by the Fucus natans is incomparably greater than that of any other assemblage of social plants. Oviedo calls the fucus banks “meadows,” praderias de yerva. If we consider that Pedro Velasco, a native of the Spanish harbour of Palos, by following the flight of certain birds from Fayal, discovered the Island of Flores as early as 1452, it seems almost impossible, considering the proximity of the great fucus bank of Corvo and Flores, that no part of these oceanic meadows should have been seen before the time of Columbus by Portuguese ships driven westward by storms.
We learn, however, from the astonishment of the companions of the admiral, when they were continuously surrounded by sea-grass from the 16th of September to the 8th of October, 1492, that the magnitude of the phenomenon was at that period unknown to mariners. In the extracts from the ship’s journal given by Las Casas, Columbus certainly does not mention the apprehensions which the accumulation of sea-weed excited, or the grumbling of his companions. He merely speaks of the complaints and murmurs regarding the danger of the very weak but constant east winds. It was only his son, Fernando Colon, who in the history of his father’s life, endeavoured to give a somewhat dramatic delineation of the anxieties of the sailors.