These southerly breezes, which are met with in the Variables, blow at times with considerable force, and greatly perplex the young navigator, who, trusting perhaps to some of the erroneous published accounts, not unnaturally reckons upon meeting the regular Trade-wind, blowing, as he supposes, from the east near the equator, not from the south; still less is he prepared or pleased to find it blowing from the south-westward.
This troublesome range, intervening between the two Trades, varies in width from 150 to more than 500 miles.

It is widest in September, and narrowest in December or January.

I now speak more particularly of what happens in the Atlantic.

In the wide Pacific, far from land, fewer modifying circumstances interfere with the regular course of the phenomena, than in the comparatively narrow sea formed by the opposite shoulders of Africa and South America.
Calms, also, are met with in this intermediate region, or purgatory of the outward-bound voyage, and occasionally violent tornados or squalls, which in a moment tear away every rag of canvas from a ship's yards.

For several hours at a time, also, rain falls down in absolute torrents.