eep, and would probably have destroyed the whole
economy of nature, had not this beautiful arrangement been provided by
the all-wise Creator.

CHAPTER THREE.

WAVES--SYSTEM IN ALL THINGS--VALUE OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE--ILLUSTRATIVE
ANECDOTE--HEIGHT OF WAVES--DR. SCORESBY--SIZE, VELOCITY, AND AWFUL POWER
OF WAVES--ANECDOTES REGARDING THEM--TIDES.

When a man stands on the deck of some tight-built ship, holding on to
the weather bulwarks, and gazing with unphilosophic eye through the
blinding spray at the fury of the tempest--by which the billows are made
to roll around him like liquid mountains, and the ship is tossed beneath
him like a mere chip, the sport and plaything of the raging waters--he
is apt to think, should his thoughts turn in that direction at all, that
all is unmitigated confusion; that the winds, which blew west yesterday
and blow east to-day,--shifting, it may be, with gusty squalls, now
here, now there, in chaotic fury,--are actuated by no laws, governed by
no directing power.

Yet no thought could be more unphilosophical than this. Apart
altogether from divine revelation, by which we are informed that "all
deeps, fire, and hail, snow, and vapour, and stormy wind," are
"fulfilling God's word" (which information we are bound to receive as a
matter of faith if we be Christians, and as a matter of necessity if we
be men of common sense, because it is mere absurdity to suppose that the
"stormy winds," etcetera, are _not_ fulfilling God's word--or will), we
now know, to a great extent from practical experience and scientific
investigation, that the winds blow and the waters of the ocean flow in
grand, regular, uninterrupted currents. Amongst these there are
numberless eddies, which, perhaps, have tended to fill our minds with
the idea of irregularity and confusion; but which, nevertheless, as well
as the grand currents themselves, are subject to law, and are utterly
devoid of caprice.

In regard to these matters there is much about which we are still in
ignorance. But the investigations of late years--especially those
conducted under the superintendence of Captain Maury of the American
Navy, and Doctors Carpenter and Thompson of England--have shown that our
atmosphere and our ocean act in accordance with a systematic
arrangement, many facts regarding which have been discovered, and
turned, in some cases, to practical account. See Note 1.

A very interesting instance of the practical use to whi