262 THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA. 



CHAPTER XVII. 



ROUTES. 



How Passages have been shortened, § 568. — How closely Vessels follow each other's 

 Track, 570. — The Archer and the Flying Cloud, 571. — The great Race-course upon 

 the Ocean, 573. — Description of a Race, 575. — Present Knowledge of Winds en- 

 ables the Navigator to compute his Detour, 582. 



568. The principal routes across the ocean are exhibited on 

 Plate VIII. ; the great end and aim of all this labor and research 

 are in these, and consist in the shortening of passages — the im- 

 provement of navigation. Other interests and other objects are 

 promoted thereby, but these, in the mind of a practical people, 

 who, by their habits of thought and modes of action, mark the 

 age in which we live as eminently utilitarian, do not stand out in 

 relief half so grand and imposing as do those achievements by 

 which the distant isles and marts of the sea have been lifted up, 

 as it were, and brought closer together, for the convenience of 

 commerce, by many days' sail. 



569. We have been told in the foregoing pages how the winds 

 blow and the currents flow in all parts of the ocean. These con- 

 trol the mariner in his course ; and to know how to steer his ship 

 on this or that voyage so as always to make the most of them, 

 is the perfection of navigation. The figures representing the ves- 

 sels are so marked as to show whether the prevailing direction of 

 the wind be adverse or fair. 



570. When one looks seaward from the shore, and sees a ship 

 disappear in the horizon as she gains an offing on a voyage to In- 

 dia, or the Antipodes perhaps, the common idea is that she is 

 bound over a trackless waste, and the chances of another ship, 

 sailing with the same destination the next day, or the next week, 

 coming up and speaking with her on the '' pathless ocean," would, 

 to most minds, seem slender indeed. Yet the truth is, the winds 

 and the currents are now becoming to be so well understood, that 

 the navigator, like the backwoodsman in the wilderness, is enabled 

 literally " to blaze his way" across the ocean ; not, indeed, upon 

 trees, as in the wilderness, but upon the wings of the wind. The 



