76 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA 



comparatively level land of the South African continent. 

 Gales, with variable winds and heavy squalls, may be 

 experienced all along this gigantic littoral, where the 

 winds are baffled by the heaven-exploring summits of 

 the greatest mountain chain of the world, rising as it 

 does almost from the ocean's margin, and, by its barrier 

 to the rain-bearing clouds that endeavour to pass to 

 the eastward, producing the mightiest series of rivers 

 on the planet. 



But in between these two disturbed areas of east 

 and west there is the enormous water space of the 

 South Pacific proper, where the finest weather of the 

 Pacific may be found. Over, roughly, one hundred 

 and ten degrees of longitude and thirty degrees of 

 latitude the South-East Trade Wind is free to wander 

 undisturbed. No land save a few scattered islands, 

 none of them of any appreciable area or height com- 

 pared with the ocean that surrounds them, is able to 

 hinder the even flow of the steady Trade, and yet its 

 steadiness is in no wise to be compared with that of 

 the beautiful South Atlantic wind. Within the very 

 heart of the Trade are to be found great patches of 

 calms and baffling winds, as if the vast currents of air, 

 bewildered at the unhindered openness of their course, 

 faltered and failed for lack of position. Here, too, are 

 hurricanes, as in the Indian Ocean, but with far less 

 apparent reason. The casual visitor to the South Sea 

 Islands, struck with the halcyon character of these 

 sunny seas, gazes wonderingly upon the houses of the 

 natives, strongly moored to stumps of coco palms by 

 cables of coir rope, spun with immense labour by the 

 busy fingers of the natives. When he asks, as I have 

 heard him, " Why do you tie your houses down with 



