OCEANUS 11 



pound to the human blood stream. Both the animal kingdom 

 and vegetable life find themselves most at home in the salt 

 waters that were the original home of all life. The sea is bio- 

 logically independent of the land, but much of the life on land 

 depends for its existence on the bland governance of the sea 

 in controlling destructive extremes of climate. Made by the 

 climate machine, and again manufacturing its own climate 

 and affecting that of the surrounding continents, the Atlantic 

 waters have governed and directed the advance of modern 

 western civilization to a marked degree. 



Just what is climate? Let's call it the prevailing conditions 

 of the atmosphere in which we live, controlled by the per- 

 petual adjustments made necessary by the varying capacities 

 of air and vapor, of land and sea, of forest and desert and ice- 

 cap, to store or transmit the fierce energy of the sun. Man is 

 part of this great thermal rhythm, a minor function of the sun. 

 Climate, in short, is the manifestation of the sun's energy 

 working through what we like to think of as the fixed mechan- 

 ics of the Earth's physical makeup. It is certain relationships 

 of land, water, and air, charged with heat, and forming a huge 

 invisible engine, that guides the Ocean River. 



So, when we think of the term Ocean River, we must think 

 in terms of a balanced and rhythmical s^^stem of natural 

 forces of sun and wind and water and the lands surrounding 

 and defining this system. We shall see that coastlines rise and 

 fall, that possibly whole continents drift across the face of the 

 globe, and that the ocean currents wavering in their passage 

 from shore to shore hold the tiny life of man in a delicate 

 balance of elemental phenomena. Around the banks of this 

 life-giving Ocean River is the present home of western man, 

 and an Atlantic community that every year is becoming more 

 clearly defined. If we can put ourselves in tune with this slow, 

 majestic revolve of fruitful waters, if we can so adjust our sense 

 of time that we can fit the past thousand years of historical 



