under current from the Mediterranean, we may begin by remarking that we know that there is a current always setting in at the surface from the Atlantic, and that this is a salt-water current, which carries an immense amount of salt into that sea. "We know, moreover, that that sea is not salting up; and therefore, independently of the postulate (§ 374) and of observations, we might infer the existence of an under current, through which this salt finds its way out into the broad ocean again.[1]
384. The drift of the Phoenix.—With regard to this outer and under current, we have observations telling of its existence as long ago as 1712. "In the year 1712," says Dr. Hudson, in a paper communicated to the Philosophical Society in 1724, "Monsieur du L'Aigle, that fortunate and generous commander of the privateer called the Phoenix, of Marseilles, giving chase near Ceuta Point to a Dutch ship bound to Holland, came up vith her in the middle of the Gut between Tariffa and Tangier, and there gave her one broadside, which directly sunk her, all her men being saved by Monsieur du L'Aigle; and a few days after, the Dutch ship, with her cargo of brandy and oil, arose on the shore near Tangier, which is at least four leagues to the westward of the place where she sunk, and directly against the strength of the current, which has persuaded many men that there is a recurrency in the deep water in the middle of the Gut
- ↑ Dr. Smith appears to have been the first to conjecture this explanation, which he did in 1673 (vide Philosophical Transactions). This continual indraught into the Mediterranean appears to have been a vexed question among: the navigators and philosophers even of those times. Dr. Smith alludes to several hypotheses which had been invented to solve these phenomena, such as subterraneous vents, cavities, exhalation by the sun's beams, etc., and then offers his conjecture, which, in his own words, is, "that there is an under current, by which as great a quantity of water is carried out as comes flowing in. To confirm which, besides what I have said above about the difference of tides in the oflSng and at the shore in the Downs, which necessarily supposes an under current, I shall present you with an instance of the like nature in the Baltic Sound, as I received it from an able seaman who was at the making of the trial. He told me that, being there in one of the king's frigates, they went with their pinnace into the mid stream, and were carried violently by the current; that, soon after this, they sunk a bucket with a heavy cannon ball to a certain depth of water, which gave a check to the boat's motion; and, sinking it still lower and lower, the boat was driven ahead to the windward against the upper current: the current aloft, as he added, not being over four or five fathoms deep, and that the lower the bucket was let fall, they found the under current the stronger."
