THE OCEAN AS THE RESERVOIR OF HEALTH 15 



unveiled by cloud, beats with pitiless force, raising the 

 temperature to heights almost unbearable by even the 

 wonderfully adaptable human frame, and rarefying 

 the air so much that a certain effect of indraught is 

 created as far away as the open ocean, the cooler and 

 heavier air rushing in to fill the vacancy created by 

 the raising of the superheated atmosphere, but being, 

 as before noted, arrested on its way with its cargoes of 

 wetness by the steaming forests of the coasts. South 

 of the equator a better state of things obtains. The 

 sea breezes find their way farther into the interior, and 

 although there are still to be found immense desert 

 spaces as dead as the Sahara, there are mighty rivers 

 and immense lakes of fresh water fed by the constant 

 influx of rain-bearing clouds from the ocean. Here 

 the land is highly diversified. There are climates 

 meet for all races, fertile land at many elevations, and 

 it may be that South Africa will one day be the home 

 of a teeming civilized population, as far removed from 

 the horrible conditions under which their aboriginal 

 predecessors lived as it is possible to conceive. But 

 we must not dispose of South Africa in this summary 

 fashion, remembering that the immense water privileges 

 and splendid health conditions it enjoys are due to the 

 work of the Indian Ocean winds, and not to those of 

 the South Atlantic, down which we are slowly 

 wandering. 



But for the certain fact that every one knows, 

 or ought to know, that in Nature there is no waste, 

 we might be tempted to ask what benefit does the 

 circulatory system of the winds of the Southern Ocean 

 afford to mankind ? With the exception of our colonies 

 in Australia and New Zealand, with a comparatively 



