228 HISTORY or 



tiiins give a direction to tbe courses of the air. Fires carry a 

 current of air along their body. Night and day alternately chill 

 and warm the earth, and produce an alternate current of its va- 

 pours. These, and many other causes, may be assigned for the 

 variety and the activity of the winds, their continual change, and 

 unceitain duration. 



With us on land, as the wind proceeds from so many causes, 

 and meets such a variety of obstacles, there can be but little 

 hopes of ever bringing its motions to conform to theory ; or of 

 foretelling how it may blow a minute to come. The great 

 Bacon, indeed, v/as of opinion, that by a close and regular his- 

 tory of the winds, continued for a number of ages together, and 

 the particulars of each observation reduced to general maxims, 

 we might at last come to understand the variations of this ca- 

 pricious element ; and that we could foretell the certainty of a 

 wind with as much ease as we now foretell the return of an 

 eclipse. Indeed, his own beginnings in this arduous undertak- 

 ing seem to speak the possibility of its success ; but, unhappily 

 for mankind, this investigation is the work of ages, and we want 

 a Bacon to direct the process. 



To be able, therefore, with any plausibility, to account for the 

 variations of the wind upon land, is not to be at present expected; 

 and to understand any thing of their nature, we must have re- 

 course to those places where they are more permanent and 

 steady. This uniformity and steadiness we are chiefly to ex- 

 pect upon the ocean. There, where there is no variety of sub- 

 stances to furnish the air with various and inconstant supplies, 

 where there are no mountains to direct the course of its current, 

 but where all is extensively uniform and even ; in such a place, 

 the wind arising from a simple cause, must have but one simple 

 motion. In fact, we find it so. There are many parts of the 

 world where the winds, that with us are so uncertain, pay their 

 jtated visits. In some places they are found to blow one way 

 by day, and another by night ; in others, for one half of the year 

 they go in a direction contrary to their former course : but, what 

 is more extraordinary still, there are some places where tbe 

 wnids never change, but for ever blow the same way. This is 

 particidarly found to obtain between the tropics in the Atlantic 

 and ^thiopic oceans ; as well as in the great Pacific sea. 



Few things can appear more extraordinary to a person who 



