Is this somewhat imaginative? Well, be it so. The facts are scientifically true. Suggested meanings, gathered therefrom, may be accepted or rejected, according to the reader’s pleasure.
We see, at all events, that from the vast Drift-Currents of the Ocean, born of the Winds, spring the Grandchildren of the Winds, such powerful rivers as the Gulf Stream and the Black Stream; they in their turn giving birth to an infinite number of lesser currents, Great-grandchildren of the Winds;—one and all taking their share in a world-wide circulation of Ocean-waters.
The southern belt of westerly winds, with its resulting westerly current, would be repeated in the northern hemisphere, but for the presence of great masses of land. Continents work havoc with schemes of ocean circulation.
That westerly winds do greatly prevail in corresponding latitudes to the north is a well-known fact, though we cannot boast the possession of anything like the “Roaring Forties.” No broad belts of unchanging air-currents can exist in the neighbourhood of so much land, for the counter-influences are too many.
From steadfast Wind-belts, giving birth to steadfast Ocean-streams, we pass naturally to those fitful storms which lash the ocean into passing passions, and to the uncertain breezes of temperate climes.
There are currents and counter-currents, breezes and contrary breezes, winds from north and south and east and west, over the whole earth. Each separate movement of air helps to stir the waters of the sea into renewed restlessness.
Though few things are more wonderful than those vast rivers of air and water, pouring always in the same direction, century after century, they are perhaps less impressive from a man’s point of view than many a mere whirling eddy, which flings itself along, rousing a huge flurry of water, and soon dying out of existence. A man cannot grasp as a whole the Trades or the Roaring Forties, with their companion ocean rivers. Practically he knows only that little portion of each which happens to be near his ship. If he is overtaken by a hurricane, the whole life of which is compressed into a few miles of space and a few hours of time, he feels a greater awe.
Small wonder that he should. Those impetuous and short-lived eddies are terrible in their fury. Their winds blow with a fierceness never approached by the stiffest Trade. A hurricane, tearing over Earth’s surface at the rate of one hundred and twenty miles an hour, reduces the most muscular of men to helplessness.
None the less, such a hurricane is in itself a mere accident, a mere passing incident, a mere swirl of air, coming into being to adjust a lost balance, and vanishing so soon as its work is done. We have seen tiny swirls of air dancing along the road, on a windy day, sweeping up bits of straw or dried leaves into their embrace. Such little swirls are hurricanes in miniature. The real thing levels forests, wrecks towns, lashes the ocean into mountainous heights of water, sinks gallant ships, destroys human lives. Yet the little swirl and the hurricane are closely akin.
Only in recent years has the circular—more strictly, the oval—shape of a hurricane become known. It may be described as a revolving eddy of air, the winds pouring in a corkscrew-like fashion round the centre, inwards from without, and upwards from within. Another kind of air-eddy, called an anti-cyclone, gyrates just the other way, downward and outward. This usually brings light winds and dry weather, instead of storms and rain.