370 THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA. 



In studying the workings of the various parts of the physical 

 machinery that surrounds our planet, it is always refreshing and 

 profitable to detect, even by glimmerings never so faint, the slight- 

 est tracings of the purpose which the Omnipotent Architect of the 

 universe designed to accomplish by any particular arrangement 

 among its various parts. Thus it is in this instance : whether the 

 train of reasoning which we have been endeavoring to follow up, 

 or whether the arguments which we have been adducing to sustain 

 it be entirely correct or not, we may, from all the facts and cir- 

 cumstances that we have passed in review, find reasons sufS.cient 

 for regarding in an instructive if not in a new light that vast 

 waste of waters which surrounds the unexplored regions of the 

 antarctic circle. 



It is a reservoir of dynamical force for the winds, a regulator 

 in the grand meteorological machinery of the earth. 



1022. The heat which is transported by the vapors with which 

 that sea loads its superincumbent air is the chief source of the mo- 

 tive power which gives to the winds of the southern hemisphere, as 

 they move through their channels of circulation, their high speed, 

 great regularity, and consistency of volume. And this insight 

 into the workings of the wonderful machinery of sea and air we 

 obtain from comparing together the relative speed of vessels as 

 they sail to and fro uj)on intertropical seas ! 



1028. Such is the picture which, after no little labor, much re- 

 search, and some thought, the winds have enabled us to draw of 

 certain unex]3lored portions of our planet. As we have drawn 

 the picture, so, from the workings of the meteorological machinery 

 of the southern hemisphere, we judge it to be. The evidence 

 which has been introduced is meteorological in its nature, circum- 

 stantial in its character, we admit ; but it shows the idea of land 

 in the antarctic regions — of much land, and high land — to be 

 plausible at least. Not only so : it suggests that a group of act- 

 ive volcanoes there would be by no means inconsistent with the 

 meteorological phenomena which we have been investigating. 

 True, volcanoes in such a place may not be a meteorological ne- 

 cessity. We can not say that they are ; yet the force and regu- 

 larity of the winds remind us that their presence there would not 

 be inconsistent with known laws. According to these laws, we 

 may as well imagine the antarctic circle to encompass land as to 



