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 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.
On my return in early April we caught the northeast Trades shortly after
turning Cape Palmas, and kept them till close upon Grand Canary. They
were a complete contrast with the Harmatan, the firmament looking
exceptionally high, and the sun shining hot, while a crisp, steady gale
made the 'herds of Proteus' gambol and disport themselves over the long
ridges thrown up by the cool plain of bright cerulean. The horizon, when
clear, had a pinkish hue, and near coast and islands puffy folds of
dazzling white, nearly 5,000 feet high, were based upon dark-grey
streaks of cloudland simulating continents and archipelagoes. Within the
tropics the heavens appear lower, and we never sight blue or purple
water save after a tornado. The normal colour is a dirty, brassy
yellow-brown, here and there transparent, but ever unsightly in the
extreme. It must depend upon some unexplained atmospheric conditions; and the water-aspect is often at its ugliest when the skies are clearest. I have often seen the same tints when approaching Liverpool.
Through the Harmatan-haze we failed to sight Cape Juby, opposite
Fuerteventura; and at Santa Cruz I missed Mr. Mackenzie, the energetic
flooder of the Sahará. He has, they say, given up this impossibility and
opened a comptoir: its presence is very unpleasant to the French
monopolists, who seem to 'monopole' more every year. South of Juby comes
historic Cape Bojador, the 'Gorbellied,' and Cabo Blanco, which is to
northern what Cabo Negro is to southern Africa. The sole remarkable
events in its life are, firstly, its being named by Ptolemy Granaria
Extrema, whence the Canarii peoples south-west of the Moroccan Atlas and
our corrupted 'Canaries;' and, secondly, its rediscovery by one Gonçalez
Baldeza in 1440.