The heat of the equator, raising up the water in steam, had formed a band of shade around the earth.

From other worlds it must appear like a girdle of clouds almost similar to the sidereal rings.
In this gloomy, hot sea was the heart of the ocean, the center of the circulatory life of the planet.

The sky was a regulator that, absorbing and returning, restored the evaporation to equilibrium.

From this place were sent forth the rains and dews to all the rest of the earth, modifying its temperatures favorably for the development of animal and vegetable life.

There were exchanged the exhalations of the two worlds; and, converted into clouds, the water of the southern hemisphere--the hemisphere of the great seas with no other points of relief than the triangular extremities of Africa and America, and the humps of the oceanic archipelagoes--was always reinforcing the rills and rivers of the northern hemisphere with its inhabited lands.
From this equatorial zone, the heart of the globe, come forth two rivers of tepid water that heat the coasts of the north.