for weeks and months, ay, and years together--not
irregularly, not at haphazard, but steadily, perseveringly, in strict
obedience to the undeviating laws which regulate the currents in the
ocean and the air as truly and unchangeably as they do the circulation
of the blood in the human frame.

The bottle started from that part of the South Pacific which is known to
mariners as the Desolate Region--so called from the circumstance of that
part of the sea being almost entirely destitute of animal life. Here it
floated slowly, calmly, but surely, to the eastward with the great
oceanic current, which, flowing from the regions of the antarctic sea,
in that part sweeps round the southern continent of America, and makes
for the equator by way of the southern Atlantic Ocean.

Now, reader, allow me to screw up a little philosophy here, and try to
show you the why and the wherefore of the particular direction of our
bottle's voyage.

Man has been defined by some lexicographer as a "cooking animal." I
think it would be more appropriate to call him a _learning animal_, for
man does not always cook, but he never ceases to learn--also to unlearn.

One of the great errors which we have been called on, of recent years,
to unlearn, is the supposed irregularity and uncertainty of the winds
and waves. Nothing is more regular, nothing more certain--not even the
rising and setting of the sun himself--than the circulation of the
waters and the winds of earth. The apparent irregularity and
uncertainty lies in our limited power and range of perception. The laws
by which God regulates the winds and waves are as fixed as is the law of
gravitation, and every atom of air, every drop of water, moves in its
appointed course in strict obedience to those laws, just as surely as
the apple, when severed from the bough, obeys the law of gravitation,
and falls to the ground.

One grand and important fact has been ascertained, namely, that all the
waters of the sea flow from the equator to the poles and back again.

Disturbed equilibrium is the great cause of oceanic currents. Heat and
cold are the chief agents in creating this disturbance.

It is obvious that when a portion of water in any vessel sinks, another
portion must of necessity flow into the space which it has left, and if
the cause which induced the sinking continue, so the flow to fill up
will continue, and thus a current will be established.

Heat at the equator warms the sea-wate