CHAPTER VII.
VIGO BAY.
The Atlantic! A vast expanse of water, whose superficial area covers 25,000,000 of square miles, is 9,000 miles long, and has an average breadth of 2,700 miles. This enormous ocean was almost unknown to the ancients, unless the Carthaginians perhaps, who in their commercial progression followed the coasts of Europe and Africa. An ocean whose winding and parallel shores embrace an immense area; supplied by the largest rivers in the world—the St. Lawrence, the Mississippi, the Amazon, La Plata, Orinoco, Niger, Senegal, Elbe, Loire, Rhine, which bear their waters to it through the most civilised, and also through the most barbarous countries. A magnificent sheet of water ploughed by vessels over which the flag of every nation waves, and which is bounded by those two points, so terrible to sailors, the Cape Horn and the “Cape of Storms.”
The Nautilus was cutting her way through these waters, having made 10,000 leagues in three months and a half—a distance greater than one of the earth’s great circles. Whither were we now bound, and what had the future in store for us?
