for a great and beneficent object;
and that, to effect it, he has employed some potent and sufficient
agent, which, when he thinks fit, he will allow to be revealed to us by
the light of that science which he has given as one of his best gifts to
man. There are, as you perceive on the charts, other currents in the
vast ocean, all set in movement for the sake of benefiting the
inhabitants of the globe. While the warm Gulf Stream runs up to
Spitzbergen, the Hudson's Bay and Arctic currents bring cold water and
icebergs towards the south; and a current from the North Atlantic
carries its cooling waters round the arid shores of western Africa.
There is the great equatorial current from east to west round the world,
and numerous other currents in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, the
influence of which we shall feel during our voyage; and by knowing where
to search for them, and where to avoid them, we can generally make them
serviceable to our object. What I would especially point out to you, my
lads, is the beautiful adaptation of all the works of the Creator to the
great object of the whole. The air and water are kept in motion for the
benefit of man and all living beings. Order everywhere reigns supreme.
Science shows us that storms are regulated by exact laws, and it is only
through our ignorance and blindness that we cannot tell whence they
come, and whither they go. What an admirable system of compensation
exists throughout the universe! Heat, lost by radiation, is quickly
restored; water, lifted up by evaporation, has its place supplied by
colder currents; mighty rivers discharge their waters in vast quantities
into the ocean, and from the far-off regions of the tropics the winds
come loaded with dense vapours, which, precipitated at their sources
with ample and regular measure, supply all their demands. I might
produce numberless examples. As an instance, the whole volume of the
waters of the Mississippi, rushing out at its mouth, find their way back
again in an ever-constant circle to its sources among the far-off lakes
of North America. The Gulf Stream fertilises the earth for the benefit
of man, and it likewise carries food to regions frequented by the mighty
whales. Frequently large shoals of sea-nettles, on which the black
whale feeds, have been met with, borne onward towards its haunts in the
north. The whale itself, it is believed, could not exist in the warm
waters of the stream. Fish, also, are not