were most of the early navigators, who styled it the "Doldrums."
Now-a-days, however, our knowledge of the currents of ocean and
atmosphere enables us to avoid the Sargasso seas and sail round them,
thereby preventing delay, facilitating trade, saving time, and greatly
improving the condition of mankind.

Now, our bottle happened to get entangled in the weed of the Sargasso
that exists in the neighbourhood of the Falkland Islands, and stuck fast
there for many months. It was heaved up and down by the undulations,
blown about a little by occasional breezes, embraced constantly by
seaweed, and sometimes tossed by waves when the outskirts of a passing
gale broke in upon the stagnant spot; but beyond this it did not move or
advance a mile on its voyage.

At last a hurricane burst over the sea; its whirling edge tore up the
weed and swept the waters, and set the bottle free, at the same time
urging it into a north-easterly current, which flowed towards the coast
of Africa. On its way it narrowly missed entanglement in another
Sargasso,--a little one that lies between the two continents,--but
fortunately passed it in safety, and at last made the Cape of Good Hope,
and sighted the majestic Table Mountain which terminates the lofty
promontory of that celebrated headland.

Here the bottle met with the wild stormy weather that induced its
Portuguese discoverer, Bartholomew Diaz, to name it the "Cape of
Tempests," and which cost him his life, for, on a succeeding voyage, he
perished there. King John the Second of Portugal changed its name into
the Cape of Good Hope, and not inappropriately so, as it turned out;
for, a few years after its discovery in 1486, Vasco de Gama doubled the
Cape of Good Hope and discovered the shores of India, whence he brought
the first instalment of that wealth which has flowed from east to west
ever since in such copious perennial streams.

There was a perplexing conflict of currents here which seemed to
indicate a dispute as to which of them should bear off the bottle. The
great Mozambique current, (which, born in the huge caldron of the Indian
Ocean, flows down the eastern coast of Africa, and meets and wars with
the currents coming from the west), almost got the mastery, and
well-nigh swept it into an extensive Sargasso sea which lies in that
region; in which case the voyage might have been inconceivably delayed;
but an eccentric typhoon, or some such turbulent character, struck in
from the