190 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA, AND ITS METEOROLOGY. . 



it goes, and making it delightful. The Andes, with their snow- 

 caps, on one side of the narrow Pacific slopes of this intertropical 

 repuhhc, and the cuiTent from the Antarctic regions on the other, 

 make its climate one of the most remarkable in the world ; for, 

 though torrid as to latitude, it is such as to temperatm^e that cloth 

 clothes are seldom felt as oppressiye during any time of the year, 

 especially after nightfall. 



399. Between Hiunholdt's CmTent and the great equatorial 

 The "desolate " flow, there is an area marked as the " desolate region," 

 region. ^Uts IX. It was ohscrved that this part of the 

 ocean was rarely visited by the whale, either sperm or right ; why, 

 it did not appear ; but observations asserted the fact. Foimerly, 

 this part of the ocean was seldom whitened by the sails of a ship, 

 or enlivened by the presence of man. Neither the industrial pur- 

 suits of the sea nor the highways of commerce called him into it. 

 Now and then a roving cruiser or an enterprising whale-man passed 

 that way ; but to all else it was an unfrequented part of the ocean, 

 and so remained until the gold-fields of Australia and the guano 

 islands of Peru made it a thoroughfare. All vessels bound from 

 Australia to South America now pass through it, and in the jour- 

 nals of some of them it is described as a region almost void of the 

 signs of life in both sea and au\ In the South Pacific Ocean espe- 

 cially, where there is such a wide expanse of water, sea-birds often 

 exhibit a companionship with a vessel, and will follow and keep 

 company with it through storm and calm for weeks together. Even 

 those kinds, as the albatross and Cape pigeon, that delight in the 

 stormy regions of Cape Horn and the inhospitable chmates of the 

 Antarctic regions, not unfrequently accompany vessels into the per- 

 petual summer of the tropics. The sea-bkds that join the ship as 

 she clears Australia will, it is said, follow her to this region, and 

 then disappear. Even the chirp of the stormy-petrel ceases to be 

 heard here, and the sea itseK is said to be singularly barren of life. 



400. In the intertropical regions of the Pacific, and among the 

 Polynesian drift, heated watcrs of Polynesia, a warm cm-rent or drift 



of immense volume has its genesis. It rather drifts than flows to 

 the south, laving as it goes, the eastern shore of Australia and both 

 shores of New Zealand. These are the waters in which the little 

 coraUines dehght to build their atolls and their reefs. The inter- 

 tropical seas of the Pacific afford an immense smface for evapora- 

 tion. No rivers empty there ; the annual fall of raui there, except 

 in the " Equatorial Doldrums," is small, and the evaporation is all 



