diverted upwards along the shores of Chili
and Peru. Between these two parts, a large
body of the southern stream which has not
reached the continent is turned back, in about
twenty-six degrees latitude, and ninety degrees
longitude, to form the southern part of the
great equatorial current, into which the mass
of water flowing northward up the shores of
South America, will also be deflected
presently.

The current northward, Humboldt's, coasting
the continent from Valparaiso to near
Guyaquil, has not lost, even under the Equator,
all its frost. It turns at Punta Pariña,
before reaching Guyaquil, surrounds the
Gallapagos Islands on the Equator itself, and
pulls their temperature down ten degrees;
then it flows on westward with the great
equatorial stream, assisted by the winds. In
the desert of Lower Peru, at a few feet above
the water, the cold occasioned by this polar
current is quite unmistakeable, and, at one
season of the year, it yields up fogs for months,
at Lima, called the Garua, which make the
morning sun look like a moon, vanish soon
after mid-day, and leave heavy dews at night.
Ships on the coast, especially between Pisco
and Lima, can take no observation of the
shore, and the current, hurried on by the
impediment it meets, frequently carries them
beyond their destination. Sixteen hundred
miles from Valparaiso to Callao, wind and
current favouring, will be an eight or nine
days' sail; but from Callao back to
Valparaiso, it is a voyage frequently of weeks or
months.

The great equatorial current, flowing westward,
contains the whole of the Antarctic
drift, except so much of it has slipped out of
the Pacific round Cape Horn, fed, of course,
by currents from the North Pole also. This
mighty mass of water occupying a third part
of the distance from Pole to Pole, runs through
the great sieve of islands between Australia
and China, part of it being also deflected
northward in a warm current along the
south-eastern borders of Japan.

Now we will follow it into the Indian
Ocean; but before leaving the Pacific, we
may make note of a fact, that the advantage
of steam over sailing-vessels is nowhere so
enormous as it must be on the coasts of Chili
and Peru. A steamer leaving Guyaquil four
weeks after a sailing-vessel, can reach Lima
first.

The currents in the Indian Ocean are
inextricably complicated with the winds; and if
the winds expect attention just at present,
they may whistle for it. It is enough to say
that the great equatorial stream still pouring
westward strikes against the coast of Africa,
and finding that it has no thoroughfare, pours
southward on each side of Madagascar, and
doubles the Cape in the Agulhas or Cape
current, outside which a counter current flows
back out of the Atlantic. The stream of water
having passed the Cape, turns northward, is
deflected by the shape of the land between
Benin and Sierra Leone, not from the land,
but from the edge of a returning stream that
coasts it. It is to be remembered, also, that
it follows its own bent in this deflection,
flowing westward, as the main equatorial
current, with a speed of, in some places, thirty,
and in some places seventy-eight miles a day.
After giving off a north-west branch, and
having a temperature now of seventy-nine
degrees under the Equator, the main current
strikes the east prominence of South America,
at Cape St. Roque. This causes it to split. A
southerly branch coasts in the direction of
Cape Horn, and goes home to the Pacific,
tired of travel; but the rest, pouring along
northward, flows through the West India
Islands into the Gulf of Mexico, a hollow
excavated by its stream. It is of course to
be understood that the outline of land is not
caused only by the action of the currents; it
is determined, also, by the geological character
of soil; the loose soils wear away, while
rocks oppose a barrier. The West India
Islands are nothing more than those hard
rocky parts of an old coast-line, which have
withstood the constant action of a current
which has been at work for ages, eating
through the softer parts; so it has made a
great bite in the Gulf of Mexico, and left us
the West India Islands sprinkled about, as
bones that proved too hard for its digestion.
In the Gulf of Mexico, encompassed by land,
the water, which has for a long time been
acquiring warmth, offers the greatest contrast
to the frosty state in which it set out on its
journey. Near the mouth of the Mississippi
its temperature reaches eighty-nine degrees.
If you have a thermometer which enables
you to warm a little water to that point, you
have only to put your finger into the warm
water, and so accurately feel how far we are
now from the gnawing cold of the South Pole.
As the stream flows constantly into the Gulf,
it must, of course, also constantly flow out. It
flows out between Florida and Cuba, being
now called the gulf stream. This coasts
northward, having a cold counter-current
between it and the shore, and crosses the
Atlantic south of the great bank of
Newfoundland, most of it turning southward to
return by a set of counter currents home.
A branch from it, Rennel's Current, touches
the Irish coast, and makes a circuit in the
Bay of Biscay, sending a weak offshoot on its
passage up the Irish Channel. Thus a drop
of water from the South Pole, travelling by
the extensive route we have just indicated,
may be shaken now from the head of the
stout gentleman, who at last consents to get
into his bathing machine.

Little less interesting than Harvey's old
discovery of the circulation of the blood is
this discovery which has been made piecemeal
in our own day of the circulation of
the water. Though the great system is not
yet anatomised in all its parts—and we are