the highlands of Western
Texas, New Mexico, and the Great Desert; curving, as all counter-trades
do, to the eastward as soon as it passes the limit of the N. E. trades,
and spreading out over our favored country, leaving the evidence of its
pathway in the greater quantities of rain, which fall annually upon its
surface. This gathering deprives a portion of the Atlantic, north of the
tropics, of its share of the counter trade, and there, as every where,
where the volume of counter-trade is small, storms and gales are
infrequent, and of less force, and comparative calms prevail. That portion
of the Atlantic has long been known as "the horse latitudes," a name given
to it by our Yankee sailors, because, there, in former times, the
old-fashioned, low-decked, flat-bottomed, horse-carrying craft of New
England, bound for the West Indies, often floundered about in the calms
and baffling winds, until their animals perished for want of water, and
were thrown overboard. Lieutenant Maury, in his most praiseworthy and
exceedingly useful investigation of "The Winds and Currents of the Ocean,"
has defined the situation of these calms and baffling winds at different
seasons--for they move up and down, of course, with the motion of the
whole machinery--and enabled navigators to avoid them, by running _east_
before they attempt to make _southing_; and very materially shortened the
voyages to the equator.

A like gathering, in volume, of the S. E. trade, on the western side of
the Pacific, enters over Asia, and covers China and Malaysia, extending,
in its western course, nearly as far as the western edge of Hindoostan. In
this concentrated volume of counter-trade, and owing to its concentrated
action, form and float the typhoons of the China Sea, and of the Bay of
Bengal; and to this anomalous aerial gulf stream, the S. E. portions of
Asia, from the western desert of Hindoostan, to the eastern portion of
China, north of the rainy belt, owe their great supply of moisture and
fertility, and their peculiar climate. The western line of this volume of
counter-trade is marked by the eastern portion of the rainless region of
Beloochistan, and the north-western deserts of India, as the western edge
of our concentrated volume of counter-trade, is marked by the arid plains
of northern Mexico, western Texas, and New Mexico. On the south of the
equatorial rainy belt, there is no corresponding aerial gulf of equal
volume, as there is no corresponding