far more deplorable than
death!

There are two great deserts: one of land, the other of water,--the Saaera
and the Atlantic,--their contiguity extending through ten degrees of the
earth's latitude,--an enormous distance. Nothing separates them, save a
line existing only in the imagination. The dreary and dangerous
wilderness of water kisses the wilderness of sand,--not less dreary or
dangerous to those whose misfortune it may be to become castaways on
this dreaded shore.

Alas! it has been the misfortune of many--not hundreds, but thousands.
Hundreds of ships, rather than hundreds of men, have suffered wreck and
ruin between Susa and Senegal. Perhaps were we to include Roman,
Ph[oe]nician, and Carthaginian, we might say thousands of ships also.

More noted, however, have been the disasters of modern times, during
what may be termed the epoch of modern navigation. Within the period of
the last three centuries, sailors of almost every maritime nation--at
least all whose errand has led them along the eastern edge of the
Atlantic--have had reason to regret approximation to those shores, known
in ship parlance as the Barbary coast; but which, with a slight
alteration in the orthography, might be appropriately styled
"Barbarian."

A chapter might be written in explanation of this peculiarity of
expression--a chapter which would comprise many parts of two sciences,
both but little understood--ethnology and meteorology.

Of the former we may have a good deal to tell before the ending of this
narrative. Of the latter it must suffice to say: that the frequent
wrecks occurring on the Barbary coast--or, more properly, on that of the
Saaera south of it--are the result of an Atlantic current setting
eastwards against that shore.

The cause of this current is simple enough, though it requires
explanation: since it seems to contradict not only the theory of the
"trade" winds, but of the centrifugal inclination attributed to the
waters of the ocean.

I have room only for the theory in its simplest form. The heating of the
Saaera under a tropical sun; the absence of those influences--moisture
and verdure--which repel the heat and retain its opposite; the ascension
of the heated air that hangs over this vast tract of desert; the colder
atmosphere rushing in from the Atlantic Ocean; the consequent eastward
tendency of the waters of the sea.

These facts will account for that current which has proved a deadly
maelstrom to hundred