It remains to speak of the offices which this remarkable ring performs. It is an important cog-wheel in the great atmospherical machine, for the distribution of water over the earth; but, besides its functions in the general system, it has local duties to perform. These are the hovering by turns over certain portions of the earth, giving them an alternation of rain and sunshine. In short, it causes the rainy, and dry seasons, in certain parallels, north and south, within the limits assigned to it. The ancients were of the opinion that the equatorial regions of the earth were a continuous, burning desert, devoid of vegetation, and of course uninhabitable; and perhaps this opinion would not be very far wrong, but for the arrangement of which I am about to speak. The Cloud Ring is a part of the system of calm-belts, and trade-winds. It overhangs the equatorial calm-belt, as has been stated, and it travels north and south with it. It travels over as much as twenty degrees of latitude—from about 5° S. to 15° N., carrying, as before remarked, rain to the regions over which it hovers, and letting in the sunshine upon those regions it has left. If the reader will inspect a map, he will find that it extends as far into our hemisphere, as the island of Martinique, in the West Indies. Fernando de Noronha, where we are now lying in the Alabama, is near its southern limit, being in the latitude of about 4° S. The reader has seen that the rainy season was still prevailing, when we arrived at this island, on the 10th of April; and that it had begun to pass away, while we still lay there—the rain and the sunshine playing at “April showers.” The preceding diagram will explain how the Cloud Ring travels:—
Figure 1 represents the island of Fernando de Noronha still under the Cloud Ring. It is early in April, and only about three weeks have elapsed since the sun crossed the equator on his way back to the northern hemisphere. When he was in the southern hemisphere, he had drawn the ring so far south, as to cover the island. His rays had been shut out from it, and it was constantly raining. The little island would have been drowned out, if this state of things had continued; but it was not so ordered by the great Architect.
Suppose now a month to elapse. It is early in May, and behold! the sun has travelled sufficiently far north, to draw the Cloud Ring from over the island, and leave it in sunshine, as represented in figure 2. Thus the island is neither parched by perpetual heat, nor drowned by perpetual rains, but its climate is delightfully tempered by an alternation of each, and it has become a fit abode for men and animals.
As we have seen in a former chapter, a benign Providence has set the trade-winds in motion, that they might become the water-carriers of the earth, ordering them, for this purpose, to cross the equator, each into the hemisphere of the other. We now see that he has woven, with those same winds, a shield, impenetrable to the sun’s rays, which he holds in his hand, as it were, first over one parched region of the earth, and then over another—the shield dropping “fatness” all the while!
CHAPTER XLIV.
THE ALABAMA LEAVES FERNANDO DE NORONHA FOR A CRUISE ON THE COAST OF BRAZIL—ENTERS THE GREAT HIGHWAY AND BEGINS TO OVERHAUL THE TRAVELLERS—CAPTURE OF THE WHALER NYE; OF THE DORCAS PRINCE; OF THE UNION JACK; OF THE SEA LARK—A REVEREND CONSUL TAKEN PRISONER—ALABAMA GOES INTO BAHIA—WHAT OCCURRED THERE—ARRIVAL OF THE GEORGIA—ALABAMA PROCEEDS TO SEA AGAIN—CAPTURES THE FOLLOWING SHIPS: THE GILDERSLIEVE; THE JUSTINA; THE JABEZ SNOW; THE AMAZONIAN, AND THE TALISMAN.
The 22d of April having arrived, we gave up all further hopes of the Agrippina, and went to sea. As we passed out of the roadstead, we cut adrift the four whale-boats which we had brought in from the captured whalers, rather than destroy them. They would be valuable to the islanders, who had treated us kindly, and it was amusing to see the struggle which took place for the possession of them. The good people seemed to have some anticipation of what was to take place, and all the boatmen of the island had assembled to contest the prizes, in every description of craft that would float, from the dug-out to the tidy cutter. The boatmen stripped themselves like athletes for the fray, and as whale-boat after boat was cut adrift, there was a pulling and splashing, a paddling and a screaming that defy all description; the victors waving their hats, and shouting their victory and their good-bye to us, in the same breath.