I have room only for the theory in its simplest form. The heating of the Saara under a tropical sun; the absence of those influences, moisture and verdure, which repel the heat and retain its opposite; the ascension of the heated air that hangs over this vast tract of desert; the colder atmosphere rushing in from the Atlantic Ocean; the consequent eastward tendency of the waters of the sea.
These facts will account for that current which has proved a deadly maelstrom to hundreds, ay thousands, of ships, in all ages, whose misfortune it has been to sail unsuspectingly along the western shores of the Ethiopian continent.
Even at the present day the castaways upon this desert shore are by no means rare; notwithstanding the warnings that at close intervals have been proclaimed for a period of three hundred years.
While I am writing, some stranded brig, barque, or ship may be going to pieces between Bojador and Blanco; her crew making shorewards in boats to be swamped among the foaming breakers; or, riding three or four together upon some severed spar, to be tossed upon a desert strand, that each may wish, from the bottom of his soul, should prove uninhabited!
I can myself record a scene like this that occurred not ten years ago, about midway between the two headlands above named—Bojador and Blanco. The locality may be more particularly designated by saying: that, at half distance between these noted capes, a narrow strip of sand extends for several miles out into the Atlantic, parched white under the rays of a tropical sun, like the tongue of some fiery serpent, well represented by the Saara, far stretching to seaward; ever seeking to cool itself in the crystal waters of the sea.
Chapter Two.
Types of the Triple Kingdom.
Near the tip of this tongue, almost within “licking” distance, on an evening in the month of June, 18—, a group of the kind last alluded to—three or four castaways upon a spar—might have been seen by any eye that chanced to be near.