Next year he sets forth again but merchants are not always punctual. The lading cannot be completed in time, or adverse winds render the setting sail unadvisable. At length, after a month or six weeks' delay, he proceeds on his voyage, and finds belt number one perhaps much the same as last year. He congratulates himself on his good fortune, and notes his observations; but in belt number two, the wind is somewhat modified, owing to its being later in the season,--it is rather against him. In number three it is right in his teeth, whereas last year it was quite in his favour. In number four, which we will suppose is the trade-wind belt (of which more hereafter), he finds the wind still easterly. Here, then, is the groundwork of confusion in our sailor's mind. He has not the remotest idea that in belt number one the wind blows chiefly, but not always, in one particular direction; that in number four it blows invariably in one way; and that in number three it is regularly irregular. In fact, he does not know that such belts exist at all, and his opportunities of observing are not sufficiently frequent or prolonged to enable him to ascertain anything with certainty. Now, when we remember that in this imperfect experience of his he is still further misled by his frequently encountering _local_ vicissitudes--such as storms and calms resulting from local and temporary causes--we see how confusion becomes worse confounded. No doubt he does gather some few crumbs of knowledge; but he is called on, perhaps, to change his scene of action. Another ship is given to him, another route entered on, and he ceases altogether to prosecute his inquiries in the old region. Or old age comes on; and even although he may have been beginning to have a few faint glimmerings as to laws and systems in his mind, he has not the power to make much of these. He dies; his knowledge is, to a very large extent, lost, and his log-books disappear, as all such books do, nobody knows or cares where. Now this state of things has been changing during the last few years. Log-books are collected in thousands. The experiences of many men, in reference to the same spots in the same years, months, and even hours, are gathered, collated, and compared; and the result is, that although there are conflicting elements and contradictory appearances, order has been discovered in the midst of apparent confusion, and scientific men have been enabled to pierce through the chaos of littlenesses by which the world's vision has been hitherto obscured, and to lay bare many of those grand progressions of nature which move unvaryingly with stately step through space and time, as the river, with all its minor eddies and counter-currents, flows with unvarying regularity to the ocean. CHAPTER SIX.