86 ATMOSPHERIC PHENOMENA LONG tJNKNOWN. 



of slavery, instead of themselves being at their 

 mercy. 



The world may be said to be encircled by a suc- 

 cession of belts of. wind, which blow not always in 

 the same direction, but almost invariably with the 

 same routine of variations. A vessel sailing from 

 north to south encounters these belts in succession. 

 To mariners of old, these varying winds seemed to 

 blow in utter confusion. To men of the present 

 time, their varied action is counted on with some 

 degree of certainty. The reason why men were so 

 long in discovering the nature of atmospheric cir- 

 culation was, that they were not sufficiently alive to 

 the immense value of united effort. They learned 

 wisdom chiefly from personal experience each man 

 for himself; and in the great majority of cases, 

 stores of knowledge, that would have been of th^ 

 utmost importance to mankind, were buried with 

 the individuals who had laid them up. Moreover, 

 the life of an individual was too short, and his ex- 

 perience too limited, to enable him to discover any 

 of the grand laws of Nature ; and as there was no 

 gathering together of information from all quarters, 

 and all sorts of men, and all seasons (as there is 

 now), the knowledge acquired by individuals was 

 almost always lost to the world. Thus men were 

 ever learning, but never arriving at a knowledge of 

 the truth. 



"May we not here remark, that this evil was 

 owing to another evil namely, man's ignorance of, 



