25 地中海四十八小时(37)
The explanation he gives seems to entail a set of conditions that everybody knows: "Now," Maury says, "if bits of cork or chaff, or any floating substance, be put into a basin, and a circular motion be given to the water, all the light substances will be found crowding together near the center of the pool, where there is the least motion. Just such a basin is the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf Stream, and the Sargasso Sea is the center of the whirl."
他说：“我们可以拿出来的说明，我以为就是从人人都知道的一种经验所得到的结果。把软木塞碎片或其他浮体的碎片放进一盆水中，使盆中的水作圆形的运动，我们就看见那些分散的碎片成一群一地聚在水面的中心，即最不受激动的部分。在现在我们留意的这个现象中，那盆是大西洋，暖流是圆形的水流，萨尔加斯海是浮体齐来一团一聚的中心。”
I share Maury's view, and I was able to study the phenomenon in this exclusive setting where ships rarely go. Above us, huddled among the brown weeds, there floated objects originating from all over:
我赞同莫利的意见，我又可以在这普通船只很难达到的特殊环境中，研究这种现象。在我们头上，浮着从各处漂来的物在这些紫黑一色一的草叶中间堆积着的，
tree trunks ripped from the Rocky Mountains or the Andes and sent floating down the Amazon or the Mississippi, numerous pieces of wreckage, remnants of keels or undersides, bulwarks sta一ved in and so weighed down with seashells and barnacles, they couldn't rise to the surface of the ocean.
有从安第斯基山脉拔下来、由亚马逊河或密西西比河浮来的大树干，门。
And the passing years will someday bear out Maury's other view that by collecting in this way over the centuries, these substances will be turned to stone by the action of the waters and will then form inexhaustible coalfields.
无数遇难船的残骸，龙骨或舱底的剩余，破损的船板，上面堆满蛤阶和荷茗儿贝，十分沉重，不可能再浮上洋面来。