OCEAN CURRENTS 131 



smalluess of the scale upon which these maps are 

 drawn, and the really great distances between many 

 tracks that appear to lie closely together, must always 

 be taken into consideration. 



It must be remembered that although in this great 

 eddy the water has scarcely any lateral movement, yet 

 the change of specific gravity, owing to evaporation, 

 causes a constant vertical movement of the waters, 

 so that, as the late Hydrographer to the Admiralty 

 almost poetically put it, " not one drop of the ocean 

 is ever quite at rest." And this is an absolute neces- 

 sity, for so vast a body of water becoming stagnant even 

 for a very short time would of necessity develop very 

 dangerous conditions to the peoples of the earth. I 

 have myself seen the ocean in one of those great 

 eddies during a long-continued calm appear to become 

 stagnant, and it was an awe-inspiring sight. For- 

 tunately, such a condition of things always rights 

 itself sooner or later atmospherically by a hurricane, 

 which, while dealing destruction to any handiwork of 

 man which it meets upon its terrible path, is in the 

 highest degree beneficial to the hemisphere generally 

 in which it occurs. 



In the South Atlantic the great equatorial current 

 is driven by the northward rush of the cold water of 

 the Antarctic to join the main body pressing westward 

 to augment the Gulf Stream. But in this great ocean 

 there is also an eddy in the centre thereof extending 

 over many thousands of square miles of one of the 

 least frequented seas in the world, for this space 

 offers no inducement to the mariner to enter therein, 

 even those handling sailing ships. The outward 

 bounders avoid it on the west, the homeward bounders 



