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James Croll, the Scottish geologist, in his Climate and Time, and latterly the old theory that ocean currents are due to the trade-winds has again come into favor. Indeed, very recently a model has been constructed, with the aid of which it is said to have been demonstrated that prevailing winds in the direction of the actual trade-winds would produce such a current as the Gulf Stream.

Without entering here into a discussion of this question, we shall only observe that, if the external impulse is constant in its action, like that of the trade-winds, the friction of the particles of water on each other must necessarily propagate the motion of the surface of the ocean even to the lower strata; and in fact this propagation in the Gulf-stream has long been admitted by navigators, who think they discover the effects in the great depth of the sea wherever it is traversed by the current of Florida, even amidst the sand-banks which surround the northern coasts of the United States.

The violent winds of Neiva are not the effect of a repercussion of the trade-winds; they rise where those winds cannot penetrate; and if the mountains of the Upper Orinoco, the tops of which are generally crowned with trees, were more elevated, they would produce the same impetuous movements in the atmosphere as we observe in the Cordilleras of Peru, of Abyssinia, and of Thibet.

When the time came for the people of the west of Europe to cross to America, they were of a different caliber from the previous immigrants. Two facts of physical geography brought Europe into contact with America. One of these was the islands of the North, the other the trade-winds of the South. Each seems to have caused a preliminary contact which failed to produce important results.

The trade-winds had died with the sun, and only the gentlest ground-swell was running; nevertheless, when the boat drew farther in the sound increased alarmingly, and soon a white breaker streak showed dimly where the coral teeth of the reef bit through.

As we glided along, through the Trade-winds, towards the neck of sea which divides Africa from South America, the symptoms of a change in climate became daily more manifest. Every skylight and stern window was thrown wide open, and every cabin scuttle driven out, that a free draught of air might sweep through the ship all night long.

One topic of conversation prevailed, and, although the talk drifted away from it at times, it invariably came back to The Job in the end. Weeks did himself credit as a host. His table, spread on the latticed balcony where the never-failing trade-winds fanned it, was decorated tastefully with flowers, red-shaded candles, white linen, and gleaming silver gave it a metropolitan air.

I CAN never forget the eighteen or twenty days during which the light trade-winds were silently sweeping us towards the islands.

This supposition is the more probable, as it is well known that the trade-winds blow but faintly for some distance within their limits, and therefore may be more easily stopped or repelled by a wind in the contrary direction: It is also well known, that the limits of the trade-winds vary not only at different seasons of the year, but sometimes at the same season, in different years.

Now that the weather had cleared up so that they could run in view of the ocean, John and Tom themselves turned in for a much-needed sleep, leaving their younger companions to direct the course of the Sky-Bird on the last stage of the lap. The trade-winds were blowing freely, but with a lack of gustiness which made progress against them quite rapid and smooth.