Atlantic, against the trade-winds; for a part of the way it runs right in the "wind's eye." The Japan current, "the Gulf Stream of the Pacific," does the same. The Mozambique current runs to the south, against the S.E. trade-winds, and it changes not with the monsoons. The ice-bearing currents of the north oppose the winds in their course. Humboldt's current has its genesis in the ex-tropical regions of the south, where the "brave west winds" blow with almost if not with quite the regularity of the trades, but with double their force. And this current, instead of setting to the S.E. before these winds, flows north in spite of them. These are the main and constant currents of the sea—the great arteries and jugulars through which its circulation is conducted. In every instance, and regardless of winds, those currents that are warm flow towards the poles, those that are cold set towards the equator. And this they do, not by the force of the winds, but in spite of them, and by the force of those over agencies that make the winds to blow. They flow thus by virtue of those efforts which the sea is continually making to restore that equilibrium to its waters which heat and cold, the forces of evaporation, and the secretion of its inhabitants are everlastingly destroying.
81. The supremacy of the winds disputed.—If the winds make the upper, what makes the under and counter currents? This question is of itself enough to impeach that supremacy of the winds upon the currents, which the renowned philosopher, with whom I am so unfortunate as to differ, travelled so far out of his way to vindicate.[1] The "bottles" also dispute, in their silent way, the "supremacy of the wands over the currents of the sea. The bottles that are thrown overboard to the currents are partly out of the water. The wind has influence upon them, yet of all those—and they are many—that have been thrown overboard in the trade-wind region of the North Atlantic, or in the Caribbean Sea, where the trade-winds blow, none have been found to drift with the wind: they all drift with the current, and nearly at right angles to the wind.
- ↑ "We have, perhaps, been more diffuse on the subject of oceanic currents than the nature of this article may seem to justify; but some such detail seemed necessary to vindicate to the winds their supremacy in the production of currents, without calling in the feeble and ineffective aid of heated water, or the still more insignificant influence of insect secretion, which has been pressed into the service as a cause of buoyancy in the regions occupied by coral formations."—Art. 65, Phys. Geography, Encyc. Brit.
