If the spot were an immense mountainous elevation, and the belt a current of liquid, or of clouds, flowing past its base, one would expect to see some such bend in the stream.

The visual evidence that the belt is driven, or forced, away from the neighborhood of the spot seems complete.

The appearance of repulsion between them is very striking, and even when the spot fades nearly to invisibility the curve remains equally distinct, so that in using a telescope too small to reveal the spot itself one may discover its location by observing the bow in the south belt.

The suggestion of a resemblance to the flowing of a stream past the foot of an elevated promontory, or mountain, is strengthened by the fact, which was observed early in the history of the spot, that markings involved in the south belt have a quicker rate of rotation about the planet's axis than that of the red spot, so that such markings, first seen in the rear of the red spot, gradually overtake and pass it, and eventually leave it behind, as boats in a river drift past a rock lying in the midst of the current.
This leads us to another significant fact concerning the peculiar condition of Jupiter's surface.

Not only does the south belt move perceptibly faster than the red spot, but, generally speaking, the various markings on the surface of the planet move at different rates according as they are nearer to or farther from the equator.