ON THE GEOLOGICAL AGENCY OF THE WINDS. 197 



Mountains of the Moon. Thus there are two "wind-roads'' cross- 

 ing this sea : to the windward of it, each road runs through a rain- 

 less region ; to the leeward there is, in each case, a river to cross. 



410. The Persian Gulf lies, for the most part, in the track of 

 the southwest winds : to the windward of the Persian Gulf is a 

 desert ; to the leeward, the River Indus. This is the route by 

 which theory would require the vapor from the Red Sea and Per- 

 sian Gulf to be conveyed ; and this is the direction in which we 

 find indications that it is conveyed. For to leew^ard do we find, in 

 each case, a river, telling to us, by signs not to be mistaken, that it 

 receives more water from the clouds than it gives back to the winds, 



411. Is it not a curious circumstance, that the winds which 

 travel the road suggested from the southern hemisphere should, 

 when they touch the earth on the polar side of the tropic of Can- 

 cer, be so thirsty, more thirsty, much more, than those which trav- 

 el on either side of their path, and which are supposed to have 

 come from southern seas, not from southern lands ? 



412. The Mediterranean has to give those winds three times as 

 much vapor as it receives from them (§ 399) ; the Red Sea gives 

 them as much as they can take, and receives nothing back in re- 

 turn but a little dew (§ 238) ; the Persian Gulf also gives more 

 than it receives. What becomes of the rest ? Doubtless it is . 

 given to the winds, that they may bear it oif to distant regions, and 

 make lands fruitful, that but for these sources of supply would be 

 almost rainless, if not entirely arid, waste, and barren. 



413. These seas and arms of the ocean now present themselves 

 to the mind as counterpoises in the great hygrometrical machinery 

 of our planet. As sheets of water placed w^here they are, to bal- 

 ance the land in the trade- wind region of South America and 

 South Africa, they now present themselves. When the founda- 

 tions of the earth were laid, Ave know who it was that "measured 

 the vraters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out the heavens 

 with a span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a meas- 

 ure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a bal- 

 ance ;" and hence we know^ also that they are arranged both ac- 

 cording to proportion and to place. 



414. Here, then, we see harmony in the winds, design m the 

 mountains, order in the sea, arrangement in the dust, and form for 

 the desert. Here are signs of beauty and works of grandeur ; and 



