304 THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA. 



gitude 63° west, as a comparison : in the former, cattle liave to be 

 stabled and fed during the winter, not being able to get a living 

 in the fields on account of snow and ice. In the latter, the cattle 

 feed in the fields all winter, there being plenty of • vegetation and 

 no use of hay. On the Falkland Islands (latitude 51-2° south), 

 thousands of bullocks, sheep, and horses are running wild over 

 the country, gathering a living all tlixough the winter." 



877. The water in the equatorial caldron of Guinea can not es- 

 cape north — the shore-liuQ will not permit it. It must, therefore, 

 overflow to the south, as that of St. Boque does to the north, car- 

 rying to Patagonia and the Falkland Islands, beyond 50° south, 

 the winter climate of Charleston, South Carolina, on our side of 

 the North Atlantic, or of the "Emerald Island" on the other. 



878. All geographers have noticed, and philosophers have fre- 

 quently remarked upon the conformity, as to the shore-line pro- 

 file, of equatorial America and equatorial Africa. 



879. It is true, we can not now tell the reason, though explana- 

 tions founded upon mere conjecture have been offered, why there 

 should be this sort of jutting in and jutting out of the shore-line, 

 as at Cape St. Roque and the Gulf of Guinea, on opposite sides of 

 the Atlantic ; but one of the purposes, at least, which this pecul- 

 iar configuration was intended to subserve, is without doubt now 

 revealed to us. 



880. We see that, by this configuration, two cisterns of hot 

 water are formed in this ocean ; one of which distributes heat and 

 warmth to western Europe ; the other, at the opposite season, 

 tempers the climate of eastern Patagonia. 



881. Phlegmatic must be the mind that is not impressed with 

 ideas of grandeur and simplicity as it contemplates that exquisite 

 design, those benign and beautiful arrangements, by which the cli- 

 mate of one hemisphere is made to depend upon the curve of that 

 line against which the sea is made to dash its waves in the other. 

 Impressed with the perfection of terrestrial adaptations, he who 

 studies the economy of the great cosmical arrangements is re- 

 minded that not only is there design in giving shore-lines their 

 profile, the land and the water their proportions, and in placing 

 the desert and the pool where they are, but the conviction is forced 



