the state of rest which appears in the air and sea when there is no wind stirring. A calm is more dreaded by a sea-faring man than a storm if he has a strong ship and sea-room enough; for under the line excessive heat sometimes produces such dead calms, that ships are obliged to stay two or three months without being able to stir one way or other. Two opposite winds will sometimes make a calm. This is frequently observed in the gulf of Mexico, at no great distance from the shore, where some gust or land-wind will so poise the general easterly wind, as to produce a perfect calm.

Calms are never so great on the ocean as on the Mediterranean, by reason the flux and reflux of the former keep the water in a continual agitation, even where there is no wind; whereas there being no tides in the latter, the calm is sometimes so dead, that the face of the water is as clear as a looking-glass; but such calms are almost constant preludes of an approaching storm. On the coasts about Smyrna, a long calm is reputed a prognostic of an earthquake.

It is not uncommon for the vessels to be calmed, or becalmed, as the sailors express it, in the road of the constant Levantine winds, in places where they ride near the land. Thus between the two capes of Cartoceto toward the main, and cape Antonio in Cuba, the sea is narrow, and there is often a calm produced by some gust of a land-wind, that poises the Levantine wind, and renders the whole perfectly still for two or three days. In this case, the current that runs here is of use to the vessels, if it sets right; when it sets easterly, a ship will have a passage in three or four days to the Havannah; but if otherwise, it is often a fortnight or three weeks fail, the ship being embayed in the gulf of Mexico.

When the weather is perfectly calm, no wind at all stirring, the sailors try which way the current sets, by means of a boat which they send out, and which will ride at anchor though there is no bottom to be found, as regularly and well as if fastened by the strongest anchor to the bottom. The method is this: they row the boat to a little distance from the ship, and then throw over their plummet, which is about forty pounds weight; they let this sink to about two hundred fathom; and then, though it never reaches the bottom, the boat will turn head against the current, and ride as firmly as can be.

CALM Latitudes, in sea language, are situated in the Atlantic ocean, between the tropic of Cancer and the latitude of 29° N. or they denote the space that lies between the trade and variable winds, because it is frequently subject to calms of long duration.