“Or from Mexico to China.”

“Yes, either will do; then there is no necessity for tacking, you have only to rig your sails and smoke your pipe, or go to sleep; you may, in that way, run four thousand leagues in three months.”

“Stiff sailing that, Willis.”

“Yes, Master Ernest, but it does not come up to your yarn about the stars, you recollect, ever so many millions of miles in a second!”

“The trade winds, I was going to observe,” continued Becker, “that blow from the west coast of Africa, carry with them a stifling heat.”

“That might be expected,” remarked Frank, “since they pass over the hot sands of the desert.”

“Well, can you tell me why the same wind is cooler on the east coast of America?”

“Because it has been refreshed on crossing the ocean that separates the two continents?”

“By taking a glass of grog on the way,” suggested Willis.

“Yes; and so in Europe the north wind is cold because it carries, or rather consists of, air from the polar regions; and the same effect is produced by the south wind in the other hemisphere.”

“It is for a like reason,” suggested Ernest, “that the south wind in Europe, and particularly the south-west wind, is humid, and generally brings rain, because it is charged with vapor from the Atlantic Ocean.”

“How is it, father, that the almanac makers can predict changes in the weather?”

“The almanac makers can only foresee one thing with absolute certainty, and that is, that there are always fools to believe what they say.  A few meteorological phenomena may be predicted with tolerable accuracy; but these are few in number, and range within very narrow limits.”

“Their predictions, nevertheless, sometimes turn out correct.”

“Yes, when they predict by chance a hard frost on a particular day in January, it is just possible the prediction may be verified; out of a multitude of such prognostications a few may be successful, but the greater part of them fail.  Their few successes, however, have the effect with weak minds of inspiring confidence, in defiance of the failures which they do not take the trouble to observe.”

“At what rate does the wind travel?”

“The speed of the wind is very variable; when it is scarcely felt, the velocity does not exceed a foot a second; but it is far otherwise in the cases of hurricanes and tornados, that sweep away trees and houses.

“And sink his Majesty’s ships,” observed Willis.

“In those cases the wind sometimes reaches the velocity of forty-five yards in a second, or about forty leagues in an hour.”

“Therefore,” remarked Jack, “the wind is a blessing that could very well be dispensed with.”

“Your conclusions, Jack, do not always do credit to your understanding.  The wind re-establishes the equilibrium of the temperature, and purifies the air by dispersing in the mass exhalations that would be pernicious if they remained in one spot; it clears away miasma, it dissipates the smoke of towns, it waters some countries by driving clouds to them, it condenses vapor on the frozen summits of mountains, and converts it into rivers that cover the land with fruitfulness.”