THE RUINED RIVER-PORT AND THE TATTERED FLAG.
On the night of January 10 we steamed out of Las Palmas
to cover the long line of 940 miles between Grand
Canary and Bathurst. The A. S. S. generously
abandons the monopoly of the Gambia to its rival,
the B. and A., receiving in exchange the poor profits
of the Isles de Los. Consequently the old Company’s
ships, when homeward-bound, run directly from Sierra
Leone to Grand Canary, a week’s work of 1,430
knots.
Hardly had we lost sight of the brown and barren island
and Las Palmas in her magpie suit, than we ran out
of the Brisa Parda, or grey north-east Trade, into
calm and cool Harmatan [Footnote: The word is
of disputed origin. Ahalabata, or ahalalata,
on the Gold Coast is a foreign term denoting the dry
norther or north-easter that blows from January to
March or April (Zimmerman). Christalier makes
haramata, ‘Spanish harmatan, an
Arabic word.’] weather. We begrudged the
voyage this lovely season, which should have been kept
for the journey. After the damp warmth of Madeira
the still and windless air felt dry, but not too dry;
cold, but not too cold; decidedly fresh in early morning,
and never warm except at 3 P.M. The sun was pale
and shorn, as in England, seldom showing a fiery face
before 10 A.M. or after 5 P.M. The sea at night
appeared slightly milky, like the white waters so
often seen off the western coast of India. Every
traveller describes the Harmatan, and most travellers
transcribe the errors touching the infusoria and their
coats which Ehrenberg found at sea in the impalpable
powder near the Cape Verde islands. The dry cold
blast is purely local, not cosmical. There is
a fine reddish-yellow sand in the lower air-strata;
we see it, we feel it, and we know that it comes from
the desert-tracts of northern Africa. The air
rises en masse from the Great Sahara; the vacuum
is speedily filled by the heavier and cooler indraught
from the north or south, and the higher strata form
the upper current flowing from the Equator to the
Poles. But ’siliceous dust’ will
not wholly account for the veiling of the sun and the
opaqueness of the higher atmosphere. This arises
simply from the want of humidity; the air is denser,
and there is no vapour to refract and reflect the
light-rays. Hence the haze which even in England
appears to overhang the landscape when there is unusually
droughty weather; and hence, conversely, as all know,
the view is clearest before and after heavy showers,
when the atmosphere is saturated or supersaturated.
