§ r,42, 543. THE GEOLOGICAL AGENCY OF THE WINDS. 293 



which depend for their moisture upon such sources of supply as 

 the dry land of Central South America and Africa can not over- 

 shadow a country that is watered well. It is a remarkable fact 

 that the countries in the extra-tropical regions of the north that 

 are situated to the northeast of the southeast trade-winds of South 

 Africa and America — that these countries, over which theory 

 makes these winds to blow, include all the great deserts of Asia, 

 and the districts of least precipitation in Europe. A line from the 

 Galapagos Islands through Florence in Italy, another from the 

 mouth of the Amazon through Aleppo in Holy Land (Plate YII.), 

 would, after passing the tropic of Cancer, mark upon the surface 

 of the earth the route of these winds; this is that "lee country'' 

 (§ 298) which, if such be the system of atmospherical circulation, 

 ought to be scantily supplied with rains. Now the hyetographic 

 map of Europe, in Johnston's beautiful Physical Atlas ^ places the 

 region of least precipitation between these two lines (Plate VII.). 

 6-12. It would seem that Nature, as if to reclaim this " lee" land 

 Relays for supplying from thc dcscrt, had statioucd by the wayside of 



them with vapor by, ., . p-tt 



the way. thcse wiuds a succession oi inland seas to serve 



them as relays for supplying them with moisture. There is the 

 Mediterranean, with its arms, the Caspian Sea and the Sea of 

 Aral, all of which are situated exactly in this direction, as though 

 these sheets of water were designed, in the grand system of aque- 

 ous arrangements, to supply with fresh vapor winds that had al- 

 ready left rain enough behind them to make an Amazon and an 

 Orinoco of Now that there has been such an elevation of land 

 -out of the water we infer from the fact that the Andes were once 

 covered by the sea, for their tops are now crowned with the re- 

 mains of marine animals. When they and their continent were 

 submerged — admitting that Europe in general outline was then 

 as it now is — it can not be supposed, if the circulation of vapor 

 were then such as it is supposed how to be, that the climates of 

 that part of the Old World which is under the lee of those mount- 

 ains were then as scantily supplied with moisture as they now are. 

 When the sea covered South America, nearly all the vapor which 

 is now precipitated upon the Amazonian water-shed was conveyed 

 thence by the winds, and distributed, it may be supposed, among 

 the countries situated along the route (Plate YII.) ascribed to them. 

 543. If ever the Caspian Sea exposed a larger surface for evap- 



