ON THE GEOLOGICAL AGENCY OF THE WINDS. 
197 
Mountains of the Moon. Thus there are two "wind-roads" cross- 
ing this sea : to the windward of it, each road runs through a rain- 
less region ; to the leeward there is, in each case, a river to cross. 
410. The Persian Gulf lies, for the most part, in the track of 
the southwest winds ; to the windward of the Persian Gulf is a 
desert ; to the leeward, the River Indus. This is the route by 
which theory would require the vapor from the Red Sea and Per- 
sian Gulf to be conveyed ; and this is the direction in which we 
find indications that it is conveyed. For to leeward do we find, in 
each case, a river, telling to us, by signs not to be mistaken, that it 
receives more water from the clouds than it gives back to the winds. 
411. Is it not a curious circumstance, that the winds which 
travel the road suggested from the southern hemisphere should, 
when they touch the earth on the polar side of the tropic of Can- 
cer, be so thirsty, more thirsty, much more, than those which trav- 
el on either side of their path, and which are supposed to have 
come from southern seas, not from southern lands ? 
412. The Mediterranean has to give those winds three times as 
much vapor as it receives from them 399) ; the Red Sea gives 
them as much as they can take, and receives nothing back in re- 
turn but a little dew 238) ; the Persian Gulf also gives more 
than it receives. What becomes of the rest ? Doubtless it is 
given to the winds, that they may bear it off to distant regions, and 
make lands fruitful, that but for these sources of supply would be 
almost rainless, if not entirely arid, waste, and barren. 
413. These seas and arms of the ocean now present themselves 
to the mind as counterpoises in the great hygrometrical machinery 
of our planet. As sheets of water placed where they are, to bal- 
ance the land in the trade-wind region of South America and 
South Africa, they now present themselves. When the founda-^ 
tions of the earth were laid, we know who it was that "measured 
the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out the heavens 
with a span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a meas- 
ure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a bal- 
ance ;" and hence we know also that they are arranged both ac- 
cording to proportion and to place. 
414. Here, thpn, we see harmony in the winds, design in the 
mountains, order in the sea, arrangement in the dust, and form for 
the desert. Here are signs of beauty and works of grandeur ; and 
